February 17-23, 2005

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Writing a Woman's Life

by A.D. Amorosi

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Why, after nearly 150 years, is Our Nig still controversial? It's not as if author Harriet E. Wilson scripted The Birth of a Nation. Instead, what Wilson did in her pre-Civil War novel, Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, was to blissfully portray the possibility of a (then) new society — a beautiful black America not bound by slavery and dehumanization. Wilson was bound to spark debate. She was the first black to publish a novel in the U.S. Working within the boundaries of 19th-century slave narratives and then-popular "sentimental" novels, she created characters rich in independence and empowerment. These characters also defied their times.

A white mother deserts her "mulatto" daughter Frado ("our Nig") after her black father dies. Though "adopted" into a white New England family, Frado is little more than a slave, verbally and physically abused by masters of the white house — figuratively and literally, as Wilson often refers to a government that let blacks down. Far from being bent into submission by these circumstances (and her own failed marriage), Frado keeps her head and chin up — so far up that she projects a worldy and satirical mistrust of "professed abolitionists" and Christian do-gooders whose racism is rampant. Maybe that's why this book disappeared from public display for over a century. And maybe that's why its strengths are still apparent.

A Discussion of Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson with Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald Pitts, Tue., Feb. 22, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, www.library.phila.gov.