In this project I will be looking at African american women, and their roles as authors.  How they got to where they felt they could tell their stories, and how white abolitionist women gave them the push they needed.  Also I'll be talking about the stereotypes and hurdles they had to over come to be published, as well as the material itself, the messages they sent.  African American Female authors let other americans in on their experiences, and attempted to clarify things for the masses.  They gave their experience and slavery a sense of reality for those who read their books.  Their readers felt like they themselves were experiencing what they read, which allowed slavery to become more of a reality to those in the north,as well as those of the future.

    Before there were female African American writers who wrote about slavery, there were the white abolitionist writers who paved the road for them.  In this review the author, Diane Roberts, describes how the Northern Abolisionist women used sexuality and race to characterize slavery in the south.  As stated, "by using the vocabulary of the gothic novel to represent the South's perversion and debasment, abolitionist authors were able to construct a formulaic, morally inferior South based on restrictive definitions and appropriations of the female body." This allowed African American women to realize it was okay to tell their stories, and that they wouldn't be rejected by everyone.  People wanted to hear about their stories and their experiences.

    In this review, Jean Fagan Yellin traces how white anti-slavery abolitionlist women lead the way for African american Female slaves in writing about their experiences and slavery.  She examines how the famous abolitionist motif of an enchained slave man, has been transformed into one concerning women as well.  The images of female slaves "came into a powerful cultural currency".  Yellin looks at the 'sisterly bond' between the two races and how they both "serve  to emphasize less the vicitmization of African american women under patriarchal slavery, but more through a process of identification as 'sisters'."

    In her review, Jennifer Fleischner wants her readers to think about the female African American author as more than just a sexual object in their autobiographies and stories.  She wants them to be remebered for more, and to have their story truly read and looked at instead of skimmed over.  Jennifer wants readers to recognize that Slave narratives are true, and that what they are reading did actually happen.  She believes that some readers look at the narratives in a less autobiographical sense because of the topics covered. Fleischner states that Child's story and views are ones of the "slave woman in terms of sexual rivalry and betrayal.  In part because she was childless and, though married, practically husbandless."  Her entire study is asking the reader to look deeper into the material of African American Female authors.  "Fleischner's study  invites us to consider anew the veiled complexities of the autobiographical ex-slave subject and to recognize that 'working over the slavery past in memory is one form of labor from which their is no ready release', either for the ex-slave narrative or her later readers."

    In this story, Jean Fagan Yeliin talks about Harriet Jacob's slave narrative, and how until recently it was critisized for being false.  People believed that Harriet Jacob's Incindents in the Life of  a Slave Girl: Written by Herself  was a questionable slave narrative until the discovery of a cache of her letters.  The discovery of her letters helps to "enrich our literary history by presenting us with a unique chronicle of the efforts of an underclass black woman to write and publish her autobiography in antebellum America.".  Yellin tells of how without the help of a few white abolitionist women, Jacob's autobiography would never have been published.  Not only did they encourage her to write, but they provided the help and some of the funding she needed to actually publish her autobiography.  Also, at the time, the content of Jacob's autobigraphy was considerably racy; as it talked about her as a woman and her struggles against the oppression of slavery as a sexual object and as a mother.  Her book was eventually published "with the help of black abolitionist writer William C. Nell and letters from white abolitionist woman L. Maria Child." Without the help of those two people and many others along the way, Harriet Jacob's autobiography would never have been published, and her amazing story never told.

  In this passage, there are two book reviews by two different authors.  I will only be discussing the first review as it relates closely to the topic being discussed, where the second one does not. 

   The first review is done by  Venetria K. Patton, who is discussing Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women's Fiction.  In this Patton analyzes seven texts by African American Women  whose representations of sexuality and motherhood that are symbolic of the nineteenth century and slavery.  Patton also substantiates that "nineteenth century African American women's gender representations were informed by African cultural concepts that recognized the centrality of women as mothers and sexual beings".  Patton believes that African American women wrote so much about their sexuality and motherhood because that is what their culture designates as important roles for them.  Many African American writers who look back on their slavery as a subject for their story use these themes of motherhood repeatedly.  By doing this, writers such as Harriet Jacob and Harriet Wilson "employ sentimental discourse to critique racial and gender constructs and depict African American women as self defined subjects".
  

    Once again, this passage contains two book reviews by two completely different authors.  I will be discussing the first review by Angelyn Mitchell and her take on The Freedom to Remember: Narrative, Slavery, and Gender in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction. 

    From the start of her analysis, Mitchell states that she believes that the difference between African American Men's writings and African American Women's writings is that " African American women's writing focuses on healing and liberatory practices in ways that African American men's works do not".  She isnt there to compare the two in her analysis but wants the reader to have the same common understanding as her. Aside from that comment, Mitchell's main arguement is that "African American women writers have addressed the seemingly insurmountable nature of trauma, a concise theoretical model remains slightly buried in her rigorous readings.".  African American women talk about things that men wouldn't.  The women not only dealt with the physical torture, but emotional and phsycological as well.  Mitchell also sees Harriet Jacob's book as paving the way for libratory themed books by other female African American Authors.  She specifically states that Jacob's book "introduces key themes of the liberatory tradition, such as the relationship between individualism and communalism, the threat of violation to a vulnerable black female body, and the ways in which the sexuality of the heroine can serve as an impetus for enlightenment."  Female African American writers each took Jacob's book as a starting point for their own.  They too could write about their story and have it published if they workedhard enough to do it.