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BIOGRAPHER OF SLAVE MEMOIRIST HARRIET JACOBS JOINS WRITING BLACK LIVES SERIES ON OCTOBER 26
The Writing Black Lives series on Tuesday, October 26 presents Jean Fagan Yellin, author of a highly praised biography of Harriet Jacobs, who wrote the modern classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself
The reading and discussion will take place at 7 p.m. in Altschul Atrium. The event is free and open to the public.
Yellin's biography, Harriet Jacobs: A Life , demonstrates that in spite of early scholastic dismissal, Jacobs did in fact pen her true story. According to Yellin, professor emerita at Pace University, Jacobs' book has been dismissed as being too well written and too complex to have been written by a slave girl. In her biography of Jacobs, Yellin has composed both a life and a literary investigation into the truth, restoring Jacobs' true authorship. The New York Times reviewer wrote: " No one is better equipped to tackle these issues than Yellin, a formidable researcher, who draws from previously untapped sources to provides new details about many aspects of Jacobs's life." Yellin, who received a Ford Foundation grant for the book, is also the editor of the latest edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself , published by Harvard University Press.
The year-long Writing Black Lives series is presented by Barnard's Africa and African Diaspora Studies Program to showcase significant black writers and figures of African descent through biography and memoir.
The series is organized by Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, the scholar, author, and national radio book show host, who is director of Barnard's Africa and African Diaspora Studies program. This multidisciplinary approach charts the history, politics, cultures, and, literatures of Africa in the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe.
For more information, please contact Suzanne Trimel in the Barnard Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7583, strimel@barnard.edu
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