African-American literature

novel set the stage for the work of contemporary
African-American women writers and feminist
theorists and scholars. Perhaps more important,
Our Nig, together with WILLIAM WELLS BROWN’s
Clotel, or The President’s Daughter (1853), Frank
We b b’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857), and
Martin R. Delany’s Blake, or The Huts of America
(1859), initiates the African-American novelistic
tradition: a blend of personal narrative, history,
protest, and fiction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its
Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1987.

Ernest, John. “Economics of Identity: Harriet Wilson’s

Our Nig.” PMLA 109, no. 3 (1994): 424–438.

Leveen, Lois. “Dwelling in the House of Oppression:

The Spatial, Racial, and Textual Dynamics of Har-

riet Wilson’s Our Nig.” African American Review

35, no. 4 (2001): 561–576.

West, Elizabeth J. “Reworking the Conversion Narra-

tive: Race and Christianity in Our Nig.” MELUS

24, no. 2 (1999): 3–27.

Tracie Church Guzzio

Our Nig 401