Our Nig

Frado is the mixed-race daughter of a white mother and a Black father, abandoned as a small child to serve the Bellmont household in the free North. Bound to them as an indentured servant, she endures years of cruelty at the hands of Mrs. Bellmont while grasping at small kindnesses and brief moments of hope. Harriet E. Wilson drew on her own life to write this book, long recognized as one of the first novels published in English by an African American woman. Its portrait of racism thriving outside the slaveholding South proved so pointed that the work faded from view for over a century before scholars restored it to the canon. This free PDF and EPUB edition returns a landmark of American letters to readers.