1. In the four slave narratives you have read this term, the authors often comment on the ways
their experiences are informed by both race and gender.
For example, Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent states: “When they told me my newborn babe was a
girl, my heart was heavier that it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far
more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and
sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” (Chapter XIV).
Frederick Douglass, in his narrative, claims that “Th[e] battle with Mr. Covey was the turning
point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived
within me a sense of my own manhood” (Chapter X).
Choose ONE of the slave narratives we have read this term. Discuss the ways in which the
socially constructed categories of ‘race’ and gender operated to subjugate enslaved peoples in
the Americas. Explore as well the ways in which the author resisted these experiences of
oppression and narrated an alternate sense of self-identity. Draw on the articles by Barbara
Bush, Brenda Stevenson, and/or G.K. Lewis to help you theorize enslaved people’s
oppression and resistance.