ABSTRACT
This third and final chapter (of American Literature and American Identity) on African American authors considers Frederick Douglass’s autobiographies, paying particular attention to his third and final retelling of his life. It argues that there were, in effect, two Frederick Douglasses. The first, familiar, Douglass was the vigorously masculine, confrontational, muscular opponent of slavery and critic of the United States. The other Frederick Douglass, however, was the adult version of a vulnerable child, suffering from the insecurities of early attachment loss and longing for full integration into the America that had rejected him and people like him. If Harriet Jacobs is the most antinationalist writer considered in this book, then Frederick Douglass, arguably her opposite and counterpart, is the most patriotic.
