{"id":2773,"date":"2009-11-03T22:31:14","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T22:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=2773"},"modified":"2018-03-16T01:45:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T01:45:08","slug":"harriet-wilson%e2%80%99s-new-england-race-writing-and-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=2773","title":{"rendered":"Harriet Wilson\u2019s New England: Race, Writing, and Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harriet Wilson\u2019s New England: Race, Writing, and Region<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of New Hampshire Press
\nUniversity Press of New England<\/a>
\n2007
\n272 pp. 18 B&W illus., 4 appendixes 6 x 9″
\nPaper ISBN: 978-1-58465-642-5
\nCloth ISBN: 978-1-58465-641-8<\/p>\n

Edited by<\/strong><\/p>\n

JerriAnne Boggis<\/strong>, Director
\nHarriet Wilson Project<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Eve Allegra Raimon<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Arts and Humanities
\nUniversity of Southern Maine<\/em><\/p>\n

Barbara A. White,<\/strong> Professor Emerita of Women\u2019s Studies
\nUniversity of New Hampshire<\/em><\/p>\n

Forward by<\/strong><\/p>\n

Henry Louis Gates<\/a><\/strong>, Jr., W. E. B. Dubois Professor of the Humanities
\nHarvard University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This volume, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., advances efforts to correct the historical record about the racial complexity and richness characteristic of rural New England<\/a>\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

In the mid-nineteenth century, Harriet E. Wilson<\/a>, an enterprising woman of mixed racial heritage<\/strong>, wrote an autobiographical novel describing the abuse and servitude endured by a young black girl in the supposedly free North. Originally published in Boston<\/a> in 1859 and \u201clost\u201d until its 1983 republication by noted scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.<\/a>, Our Nig<\/em>; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black<\/em><\/a>, is generally considered the first work of fiction written by an African American woman published in the United States.<\/p>\n

With this collection, the first devoted entirely to Wilson and her novel, the editors have compiled essays that seek to understand Wilson within New England and New England as it might have appeared to Wilson and her contemporaries. The contributors include prominent historians, literary critics, psychologists, librarians, and diversity activists. Harriet Wilson\u2019s New England joins other critical works in the emerging field known as the New Regionalism<\/a> in resurrecting historically hidden ethnic communities in rural New England and exploring their erasure from public memory. It offers new literary and historical interpretations of Our Nig<\/em> and responds to renewed interest in Wilson\u2019s dramatic account of servitude and racial discrimination in the North.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n