Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative, an autobiography (first-person narrative) by an enslaved black American woman who describes her experiences in slavery and her escape from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. The slave narrative is closely related to the memoir and the autobiography. (A memoir is generally defined as a form of autobiography that deals with the recollections of prominent people who have experienced or witnessed important events. Memoirs are usually concerned with the personalities and actions of others, but autobiography focuses on the writer's inner life.)
Because slave narratives document the horrors of slavery as experienced by ex-slaves, they serve as a powerful tool for exposing the brutalities of the chattel slave system, which defined people as "property." The narratives also served as a testament to the courage and dignity of black men and women who were perceived by their "masters" as subhuman creatures without souls.
Slave narratives first appeared in the United States around 1703, but most were published during the era of abolitionism, from 1831 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. One of the most prominent slave narratives published during this period was Frederick Douglass' Narrative (1845). Other narratives of this period include William Wells Brown's Narrative of William W. Brown, Written by Himself; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vasa, the African; and The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave.
