ABSTRACT
For the nineteenth-century female African-American autobiographer, writing was a performance of selfhood, an act of establishing her identity as “a woman and a sister”; it went beyond establishing a claim to woman-and sisterhood, however, and extended to the assertion of her right to be free from sexual exploitation. The themes of racism and sexual exploitation in fact dominated African-American women’s autobiography during that century, whereby women expressed their virtue, their identity, and their self-worth, as well as negotiated the double bind of being Black and female (Carlacio). These women’s narratives contained a political edge, particularly as they referred to the difficulties of satisfying the cultural expectations of true womanhood, for women’s sexual exploitation under slavery and their unique struggles to provide a secure and safe haven for their (illegitimate) children made such a goal nearly impossible. In order for these women to communicate to their readers how they were challenged by these ideals, they needed to do more than chronicle their lives under slavery; thus, the slave narrative for women evolved into a political broadside against both the institution of slavery itself and the inhumane treatment Black women faced at the hands of their White masters and mistresses.
