Afro-American Studies 243 - BLACK ACTIVIST AUTOBIOGRAPHY

From the publication of "slave narratives" in the 18th century to the present, African Americans have used first-person narratives to tell their personal story and to testify about the structures of social, political, and economic inequality faced by black people. These autobiographical accounts provide rich portraits of individual experience at a specific time and place as well as insights into the larger socio-historical context in which the authors lived. This course will focus on the autobiographies of activist women. In addition to analyzing texts and their contexts, we will reflect on and document how our own life history is shaped by race. Writers and subjects will include: Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Angela Davis, Harriet Jacobs, and Audre Lorde among others.