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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Norton, 2025)
Description: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the stirring autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive, detailing her harrowing escape from enslavement, seven years hiding in an attic crawl space, and the racism she faced in freedom.
Forgotten for decades after its original, 19th century publication, Jacobs’ story was so harrowing and so brave it was thought to be fiction. Only through the research of historian Jean Fagan Yellin in the 1980s was it proven, once and for all, to be a brilliant and compelling work of nonfiction. Incidents is routinely cited by historians and fi...