An essential collection of some of the most influential and significant writings by African-American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume includes Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE (1845) and excerpts from W, E. B. Du Bois’s THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (1903), Harriet A. Jacobs’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL: WRITTEN BY HERSELF (1861),Booker T.Washington’s UP FROM SLAVERY (1901), and James Weldon Johnson’s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN (1912).

An essential collection of some of the most influential and significant writings by African-American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume includes Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE (1845) and excerpts from W, E. B. Du Bois’s THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (1903), Harriet A. Jacobs’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL: WRITTEN BY HERSELF (1861),Booker T.Washington"s UP FROM SLAVERY (1901), and James Weldon Johnson’s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN (1912).

In his provocative introductory essay, Anthony Appiah explores the roots of African-American literature. He points out that writing itself was an act of rebellion for a population that was assumed to be illiterate,and explains the distinctive American literary and cultural context of the time, without which these works cannot be fully understood.

Edited and with an Introduction by Anthony Appiah,professor of philosophy and literature at Duke University and co-editor of CRITICAL STUDIES IN AFROAMERICAN LITERATURE

Introduction

 by Anthony Appiah

Prologue: A Selection from The Souls

of Black Folk

 by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass, an American Slave

 by Frederick Douglass, 1845

Selections from Incidents in the Life of

a Slave Girl: Written by Herself

 by Harriet A. Jacobs, Edited by

 L. Maria Child, 1861

Selections from Up from Slavery

 by Booker T. Washington, 1901

Selections from The Autobiography of

an Ex-Coloured Man

 by James Weldon Johnson, 1912