Contributed by English and literature scholars from the US, the 10 essays in this volume examine African American autobiography from 21st-century critical approaches, looking at autobiographies in
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789) is one of the most frequently and heatedly discussed texts in the canon of eighteent
The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who refused to believe that a black woman could p
