In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on the Bondwoman's Narrative [Paperback]

Two years ago, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered an unpublished manuscript,The Bondwoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Recently Escaped From North Carolina, which turned out to be the first novel by a female African-American slave ever found, and possibly the first novel written by a black women anywhere.The Bondwoman's Narrativewas published in 2002.In Search of Hannah Craftsnow brings together twenty-two authorities on African-American history, including Nina Baym, Jean Fagan Yellin, William Andrews, Lawrence Buell, Karen Sanchez-Eppler, and Shelley Fisher-Fishkin to examine such issues as authenticity and the history and criticism of this unique novel.The Bondwoman's Narrativewill take its place in the African-American canon.In Search of Hannah Craftsis the book that scholars and students of African-American Studies, of women writers, and of slavery will need to understand this unprecedented historical and literary event.Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, includingColored People, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, In Search of Our Roots, and the American Book Award-winningThe Signifying Monkey. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hollis Robbins, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, received a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and is author ofFlushing Away Sentiment: Water Politics in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.