Midterm Topics

I am interested in writing about one of the following two women:

1. Harriet E. Wilson, born in 1825, who is believed to be the first black woman to publish a novel in the United States. Her fictional autobiography, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There, details life in the north, even as a free black person, as being less than ideal. Interestingly enough, her work was thought to be the work of a white author until Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered it in 1983, supplanting Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted for the title of being the first novel to be published by a black American woman.

2. My great-grandmother. Though she was born in 1916, I've always wanted to learn more about what  life was like for her in the south. My family has letters, photographs, and oral histories about her that I would like to analyze and aggregate.