ABSTRACT
The struggle to rescue Harriet E. Adams Wilson from obscurity is paradigmatic of the larger struggle to give the accomplishments and texts of black writers their appropriate place in history. Wilsons is a particularly good case in point because virtually nothing was known about her until Henry Louis Gates, Jr., published a contemporary edition of her novel, Our Nig, that included a complex reconstruction of Wilsons life. Several years later, Barbara White’s additions to the reconstruction made the context of Our Nig yet more comprehensible, especially regarding the double standard of such white abolitionists as the Hayward family members. Compellingly requestioning the status of Our Nig as fiction based on the biographical data she has uncovered, White sketches important parallels between Incidents and Our Nig that call for a reclassification of the work. Like Jacobs, Wilson used changed names to protect herself, and hence her writing was pronounced fiction. White convincingly speculates that the shifting point of view from third person to occasional first person could be the result of the rewriting of an earlier first-person draft. 82
