Fiction
Clotel
William Wells Brown
Brown’s novel follows women navigating slavery and family separation in the early United States.
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8 books
Memoir
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Jacobs
Jacobs recounts exploitation, years spent in hiding, and her efforts to secure freedom for her children.
Speculative fiction
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
A Black writer is repeatedly pulled from twentieth-century California to a Maryland plantation.
Memoir
My Bondage and My Freedom
Frederick Douglass
Douglass revisits the details of his enslavement and expands on his life in the abolitionist movement.
Memoir
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Douglass describes enslavement, his pursuit of literacy, and his emergence as an abolitionist.
Memoir
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
William Wells Brown
Brown describes enslavement and escape, illuminating a life that began near Lexington and led into abolitionism.
History
The Half Has Never Been Told
Edward E. Baptist
A study of slavery’s expansion and the role coerced labor played in American economic growth.
Speculative fiction
Wild Seed
Octavia E. Butler
Two long-lived figures clash over control, survival, and the meaning of kinship.