Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover Thrift Editions)

Book Description

This autobiographical account by a former slave is one of the few extant narratives written by a woman. Written and published in 1861, it delivers a powerful portrayal of the brutality of slave life. Jacobs speaks frankly of her master's abuse and her eventual escape, in a tale of dauntless spirit and faith.

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Published For The Author in 1861.

Customer Reviews:

fact or fiction.......2007-07-05

Some say this isnt true, after reading it seems that some is fiction. Especially extensive quotes years after the events from someone who coulnt read or write at the time the events occured and would have no way of recording them for future use. Somewhat drawn out. Keep looking there may be something better out there on the subject.

Excellent Book, and very moving........2007-04-01

This book is one of those books that have quite an affect on you. By the time I was done I had a bit more of knowledege of how slavery really was. Clearly I had no idea until I read it. I really wanted to cry so many times during the book.

Everyone should read this book.

Awe-Inspiring!.......2007-02-25

Once I completed reading this book from front-back cover, I wanted to re-read it. I was incredibly inspired and humbled by Ms. Jacob. Her hardships, and brutal struggles were unthinkable, let alone, unspeakable. How she gathered the mental strength to put her story to paper is yet another testament of her tenacity and raw power of strength, love, belief, and courage against her most ungodly circumstances. She helped me to confirm my vow to strengthen myself in the name of all my powerful brothers and sisters....past and present. I will never complain about my life. But I will vehemently complain about the continued injustice placed on Blacks, both young and old. We, as a people, are moving forward, full-trottle. We can not and will not be stopped, ever. Let no man put us asunder! History has showed us most horribly what can happen. My life is a gift and a testament of the struggles of my ancestors. Harriet Jacob's story has given me newfound strength to persevere in my career and to live life fully. My ancestors's angst, fears, physical and mental tortures will not go unnoticed, forgotten, nor minimized. I owe my ancestors a good, if not great life! African-Americans are strong, proud and resilient.
"Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud"! Rise Up My People!
Everyone should read books of slavery. Learn not only the torture of Blacks, but the warped psyche of American slaveholders and the mental legacy they have passed on that is prevalent today.

"Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction.".......2007-01-25

And with that sentence begins perhaps the most powerful personal account on the brutality of slavery. Written under the name of Linda Brent, the reader is led on a journey into this world of hate by a white power structure in the south & north through the experiences of Harriet Jacobs.

"I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by slavery...." Jacobs writes. "Only by experience can anyone realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations."

And as I read this outstanding book, I reflected on how this country has never truly confronted the sordid past of slavery, the failure of Reconstruction and essentially a victory through defeat on the battlefield for those who were advocates of, shills for or operated businesses with slave labor.

This nation was built on the tears, blood, sweat and toil of millions, and Jacobs is one voice of truth, imploring those with open minds & hearts to hear the reality of human bondage.

The book should be required reading in every high-school American History class. The ramifications of rewriting history by running from the past must stop if this country wishes to step onto the path of true equal rights and justice for all.

Jacobs presents the facts. It is sad that it continually gets pushed aside for the fiction that is U.S. history.

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.......2007-01-05

This book was excellent, and I couldn't put it down. It was an easy read and would be appropriate for anyone over age 12.

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A good read, key information, a great scholar
Eye witness
A Model Biography
An extremely compelling biography
An inspiration!

Harriet Jacobs: A Life
Jean Fagan Yellin
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0465092888
Release Date: 2003-12-23

Book Description

For the first time--the complete story of the life and times of the most important black woman writer of the nineteenth century.

In this remarkable biography, Jean Fagan Yellin recounts the full adventures of Harriet Jacobs, before and after slavery. Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the most widely read slave narratives of all time, recounts through the pseudonymous character named"Linda" the adventures of a young female slave who spent seven years in her grandmother's attic hiding from her sexually abusive and cruel master. Jean Yellin takes us inside that attic with Harriet Jacobs and then follows her on her escape to the North, where she found safe haven with Quaker abolitionists.

Drawing upon decades of original research with never-before-seen archival sources, Yellin creates a complete picture of the events that inspired Incidents and offers the first rounded picture of Jacobs's life in the thirty-six years after the book's publication. Harrassed by her former owner, living under threat of recapture until the end of the Civil War, Jacobs survived poverty, ran a boarding house, and built a career as a political writer and speaker, struggling all the while to provide for her family. Jean Yellin brings to life the struggles and triumphs of this extraordinary woman whose life reflected all the major changes of the nineteenth century, from slavery to the Civil War to Reconstruction to the origins of the modern Civil Rights movement.

Customer Reviews:

A good read, key information, a great scholar.......2005-01-06

I've always enjoyed reading Jean Fagan Yellin's work. She is a very clear writer without any of the foolish over complication of the academic writer, even in academic journals. She's firm in her beliefs. She's not neutral or oblivious to racism and injustice to oppression and exploition either in the historical worlds she has excavated or in her discussion of the present.

While Yellin is accurate and in total possession of her subject, she is precise about what we and she do not know about Harriet Jacob's life.

This is more than what many might have expected which is a fleshed out version of her explication of the true biological facts of Harriet Jacobs autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This a biography of Harriet Jacobs as a Black woman facing the crises of her time, both in public political life and in personal and economic life.

As such, as is her practice, Jacobs takes a broad view, so what we read about Jacobs is continually inserted into the changing events of the nation, of Black people, of women. What is most compelling is Jacob's struggle to involve herself in the antislavery movement by writing her book, and then the story of Jacob's struggles to fight for support to the freed slaves and war refugees. Finally, there is a very good explanation of the split between Afrian Americans and the white section of the women's movement as figures in this womens movement turned in such a racist direction, that women like Jacobs and her daughter Maltida could no longer function within it.

Jacob's remarkable life after the civil war led her into contact with a number of the most notable white and African American literary and political figures including people you might never suspect like Henry James and William Monroe Trotter, so that anyone interested in womens, literary, and African American history from the 1850s until the 1890s would profit by reading this book. Yet, despite this prominence, it was assumed by most scholars as a Black woman she had not really written her book, until Yellin and other scholars proved this in the 1970s!

Jacob's wrote so opens the struggle of my life. Yellin presents that life of struggle not for the seven years that Jacobs hid in her closet, but throughout the seven decades of her life.

Again, Jean Fagan Yellin is a good readible, accurate writer who makes this a page turner without losing any of the dignity, scientific precision, and historic importance of this task.

Eye witness.......2004-12-04

The story of Harriet Jacobs is compelling. She was a fugitive in the North and in the South. Her autobiography, INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL, was published prior to Emancipation.

Her home town was Edenton, North Carolina. The text of INCIDENTS was authenticated through documents by the author and other researchers. In her lifetime Jacobs achieved some celebrity as the writer of INCIDENTS.

Until she was six Harriet did not know she was a slave. She was born in Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1813. Prosperity in Edenton ended after the Revolution. In 1795 a hurricane closed Roanoke Inlet. A canal through the Great Dismal Swamp impoverished Edenton.

Harriet's father was a carpenter. She learned to read and to write and to sew. A twelve Hatty was moved to another establishment. She had been willed to a three year old mistress. Next she learned that her father had died. He was buried In Providence, (rediscovered, cleared, and reconsecrated in February 2001). Hatty and her brother John were preoccupied with freedom. They knew of four people who took passage on a ship to Liberia from Elizabeth City. Hatty's grandmother became emancipated. The war of Hatty's life began as she opposed a Dr. Norcom. She formed an alliance with a person of greater reputation in the community with whom she had two children. It was a teenager's solution to vulnerability.

At age 21 in 1835 she ran from Edenton but ended up spending seven years hiding out in the vicinity in very restricted quarters. In her cramped hiding place Harriet Jacobs experienced sensory deprivation. In 1842 she was taken by boat to Philadelphia. Workers in the anti-slavery movement were impressed with Hatty's beauty and with her efforts to overcome her isolation.

Jacobs went to New York, and to Boston, and to England. She stayed in England for ten months. Later her freedom was purchased. Her venture into becoming a published writer began with a letter to a newspaper. Her autobiography was anonymous. L. Maria Child edited the manuscript and supplied an introduction.

During the Civil War Harriet Jacobs worked in Washington, D.C. as a relief worker among the so-called contrabands, former slaves. After the war she and her daughter traveled to Savannah and later to England to raise money for some of the destitute former slaves. They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then went on to Washington, D.C., probably to enable the daughter to obtain a teaching position.

A Model Biography.......2004-04-30

Jean Yellin?s Harriet Jacobs: A Life is readable, interesting and energetic narrative. It is a model biography that presents Jacobs in the context of her time. When Jacobs died in 1907, she was nearly forgotten, but Yellin?s biography restores an important woman to public scrutiny and well-deserved approbation. For most a century, Jacobs was unknown as the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, but in 1985, Yellin?s edition of Incidents established Jacobs as its author. If there was any lingering doubt of authenticity, Yellin?s fine detailing of Jacobs? life conclusively settles the issue. We are immersed in Jacobs?s drama, provided with a compelling narrative of her life and given glimpses into her family, her children, and social life of the South and North before and after the Civil War. What Yellin does so well is to document the dignity and intrepid character that raises Jacobs above the wretchedness of slavery and racial prejudice wherever it surfaces. This is a fitting life of a woman whose soul burned for freedom and whose heart was steeled to suffer even death in the pursuit of liberty and equality for African Americans and women.

An extremely compelling biography.......2004-04-19

If you have ever read Harriet Jacobs's narrative, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", you will be gasping to know more about the lives of this extraordinary woman, her two children and the other players in the plot of her young life.

Given the information available, Jean Fagan Yellin serves it up for us brilliantly thanks to her many and well presented, often extremely detailed accounts of Jacobs's movements after escape from North Carolina.

It is clear from summation of events in Jacobs's life that not only was she an intensely loving, protective and self-sacrificing mother, and seemingly held in good regard by all she came into contact with, she was also an extremely dedicated and active ambassador to the poor, the weak, and the defenseless, travelling all over the country and abroad for this singular cause, remaining to her death a champion of her people.

One of the great things about this book is that in detailing Jacobs's life, we get a better glimpse into the lives of the people important in her own life - her grandmother Molly Horniblow, her brother John S., her son Joseph and daughter Louisa, her half brother Elijah, the Norcoms and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Sam Sawyer. By documenting aspects of the lives of those in Jacobs's immediate affairs, we are able to form a clearer understanding of her character, values, motives and relationships with others.

Yellin's biography is a fascinating historical tome in its own right, capturing the political atmosphere and mood of Civil and post Civil War America. Yellin does a grand job documenting key events, attitudes and individuals to shape the pre war Abolishionist movement, post war reconstruction and emerging institutions, and the Suffragist movement for women and freed African Americans.

An inspiration!.......2004-04-15

Above all else, there is a single conclusion to be drawn from this truly remarkable book.

Anyone who has a sincere interest in the history of the United States should feel slighted that Harriet Jacobs? story isn?t already entrenched in the American consciousness alongside Harriet Tubman?s or Sojourner Truth?s. In HARRIET JACOBS A LIFE, Jean Fagan Yellin unequivocally reinvigorates a truly unique and vital American perspective all but lost to us.

Here is the story of a woman born into slavery, fighting that condition with a resolve almost unprecedented in its selflessness. To save her children from the sexual torment she experienced as a girl, Jacobs hides in the crawl space over a store room for nearly six years, before finally escaping to the North.

And though the boldness of her resistance is indeed characterized by such large singular acts of heroism, it is also made palpable by her persistent and unrelenting immersion in the mechanics of 19th century social activism, a mechanism not altogether ready for the sort of sexual realism she would air. She speaks plainly of that which the 19th century woman traditionally did not, and in doing so galvanizes a population by the raw horror of her experience as a chattel slave.

Yellin?s biography not only places Jacobs? life in its proper historical, cultural, and political context, it does so with rich descriptions of the world she inhabited; the smell of the Edenton docks, the lecture halls and drawing rooms of Boston?s abolitionist movement, the grim specter of war torn Savannah, and the wizened frames of Freedmen refugees in the nation?s capital.

Book Description

Harriet Jacobs, today perhaps the single most read and studied Black American woman of the nineteenth century, has not until recently enjoyed sustained, scholarly analysis. This anthology presents a far-ranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship that will take its place as the primary resource for students and teachers of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The contributors include both established Jacobs scholars and emerging critics; the essays take on a variety of subjects in Incidents, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles.

Customer Reviews:

How dear is your freedom?.......2007-01-05

This was a great read. The author takes us back to her innocent and fairly comfortable childhood and then surveys her own life. Her family is painted with bright brushes, you get to know them as they are beaten, whipped, run away, or die. The amount of indignity man heaps on his fellow human beings is almost too much, but Harriet's clarity helps you to understand the motivation of most of the players. Harriet's Journal clearly depicts just how the barbarism of slavery not only destroys the lives of the slaves, but of the slave owners.
Harriet manages to get free, but at what a cost! This book is a real page turner. I could not put it down.

Rare first hand account of slavery.......2006-12-16

Harriet Jacobs book Life of a Slave Girl is a unique piece of slave literature directly from the pen of an articulate slave. One gets a sense of the poignant way she can retell the story of her enslavement from a passage she writes in the preface of her book.

". . . I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a
realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South,
still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse.
I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people
of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any
one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations."

Her story raises emotions of sentiment for a mother struggling to hold her family together, and it shines a light on the cruelties of slavery. The political sentiment at the time among the elites in the northern states was increasingly becoming antislavery. The political aspect of Jacob's writing is not that of the highly stylized writings of famous abolitionists or of eminent blacks such as Frederick Douglass using reason and religion to condemn slavery. Jacob's writing is visceral and down to earth. Her powerful argument against slavery pulls at the heartstrings of any sympathetic decent human being. In essence, Jacob's story is one that resonates with people of all socio-economic backgrounds. It is no mystery why the hearts and minds of people are stirred to action after one reads Jacob's disturbing accounts of sexual depravity, mental anguish, and the destruction of the family unit, that she endured as a slave. Her first person narrative account is what makes her book such a strong force of political sentiment in the genre of slave narrative. Since there were so few slave narratives in circulation at the time, it was easy for Jacob's book to engender such strong political sentimentality.

Jacob's ability to arouse aesthetic sentimentality in her audience was a bit tricky, because of the sexual decisions she had to make in her life. Deciding to have an elicit sexual relationship with an unmarried white neighbor to escape the depraved advances of her owner could be construed as Jacob's being more interested in autonomy and less interested in chastity. Jacob has made it clear to her audience that it was her station in life that caused her to make what her white readers would consider an unconventional choice. Jacob's plight as a slave caused her to choose freedom over trying to protect her chastity more strenuously. Since slavery took away almost all of her freedom and individuality, she was willing to trade her chastity for the freedom of choice. Jacob's virginity was one of the few things she possessed that she was able to withhold from her owner. After going into detail for why she made her choice she still felt it was necessary to apologize to her "Victoria" audience for her decision. This act on her part was truly one of the few choices she had the ability to make while in slavery's bondage. Thus, once Jacob's white audience understood the dreadfully marginal position she occupied in society, most of them would feel compassion for her. This would make her audience more inclined to accept the choice she felt was necessary to make for her own well-being. Jacob's decision over who she would give her sexual being to, was he only way of holding onto some semblance of individuality.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and literature.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Modern Library MM)

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shatter the romance!
A potent pairing of two essential autobiographies

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Modern Library MM)
Frederick Douglass , and Harriet Jacobs
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0345478231
Release Date: 2004-12-28

Book Description

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.

Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

shatter the romance!.......2002-11-24

simply astounding! totally shatters those awful and ever-infectious civil war era romantic notions. be gone, "gone with the wind!" many thanks be to the spirits of mr. douglass and ms. jacobs for surviving their tremendous struggles to give us truth! recommend these books to others (especially the crowd that chooses to separate the "human stock" question from intellectual discussions of the civil war era).

A potent pairing of two essential autobiographies.......2001-10-24

"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (first published in 1845) and Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861) are probably the two most powerful examples of the slave narrative. This literary form represents the first-person accounts of individuals who have lived as slaves. The Modern Library has paired these two essential American texts in a single edition, with an introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and commentaries by Jean Fagan Yellin and Margaret Fuller.

Together, "Narrative" and "Incidents" offer a male and female perspective on the institution that has left lasting scars on America. These texts are well written, and rich in social and political insights. Both authors graphically illustrate, for example, how the Judeo-Christan Bible and the Christian church were used as tools to support the racist system of slavery. Douglass provides a powerful window into the importance of literacy as a tool by which he escaped a slave mentality. And Jacobs incisively deconstructs the twisted strands of race, gender, power, and sexuality that tied together slaveowning culture.

"Narrative" and "Incidents" are compelling pieces of literature. Moreover, the authors' themes can be seen as foundational for many later works of United States literature: Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Toni Morrison's "Beloved," Octavia Butler's "Kindred," and many other texts. Even a popular film like "The Matrix" echoes the slave narratives in some aspects.

Douglass and Jacobs are prime examples of writers who superbly combined literary craftsmanship with an intense political commitment. Their achievements make them crucial figures in the field of African-American studies. This combined edition of their outstanding books should be celebrated by teachers, students, reading groups, church study groups, and individual readers.

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ABC's for Seniors: Successful Aging Wisdom from an Outrageous Gerontologist
Ruth, Harriet Jacobs
Manufacturer: Hatala Geroproducts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1933167440

Product Description

Are you aging outrageously and courageously? In ABCs for Seniors, Dr. Ruth Jacobs presents the essentials that enable a reader to harvest life fully for creative, healthy, successful, vigorous, and meaningful aging. Topics covered include: * Reverse birthday gifts * Continuing education * Safe driving renewal * Journaling * Moving your home * Councils on Aging * Love and sex * Good accumulating * Bereavement and the holidays * Volunteering

Memories: My Life As an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace

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Memories: My Life As an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace
Aletta Jacobs , and Harriet Pass Freidenreich
Manufacturer: Feminist Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155861138X

Book Description

Â Â Â The first of Aletta Jacobs's major works available in English, Memories introduces American readers to a remarkable woman-a key Dutch feminist who herself broke new ground, and who worked alongside world-renowned leaders in the progressive movements of the early twentieth century.

Â Â Â Aletta Jacobs learned to lvoe the medical profession from her physician father, who took her on his rounds. Despite a sex-segregated education system, she became the nations's first woman to earn a medical degree. Jacobs's experiences as a doctor led her to pioneering health care reforms for prostitutes and saleswomen, as well as campaigns for the acceptance and availability of reliable birth control.

Â Â Â Aletta Jacob's career included equally remarkable achievements in the international woman's suffrage and peace movements, where she worked closely with U.S. activists Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt. Jacobs and Catt made frequent lecture tours together, culminating in a tour of Africa and Asia that combined avid sightseeing with speaking engagements in every country they visited.

Â Â Â In Memories, Jacobs recounts all of these experiences, and spiritedly imparts her opinions-such as her disdain for the customs that restricted women to theater balcony seats and chastised them for walking alone at night. By turns witty, impassioned, and poignant, Memories brings to life a time of enormous changes for women-and one of the women who helped bring about the changes.Â

Â Â Â

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Literary Touchstone Classic

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Rare first hand account of slavery

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Literary Touchstone Classic
Harriet Jacobs
Manufacturer: Prestwick House, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

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ASIN: 158049336X
Release Date: 2006-09-01

Product Description

Cover Copy: Driven by the horrors of slavery and fear of a predatory master, Harriet Jacobs, a young black woman, makes the fateful, life-altering decision to escape. Long thought to be the work of a white writer, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is the the captivating and terrifying story of Jacobs' daily life on a platation in North Carolinea, her seven years of hiding, and her ultimate triumph. Now recognized as a classic "Incidents" exposes slavery on a level comparable only to that of "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary of notes and difficult vocabulary as well as reading pointers for sharper insights.

Customer Reviews:

Rare first hand account of slavery.......2006-12-16

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SHE'S INSPIRATIONAL
an outrageously good book
Finally Be Your Fabulous SELF at Fifty or Older!
10 Star winner
For older women who are not afraid of life

Be an Outrageous Older Woman
Ruth Harriet Jacobs
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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ASIN: 0694518972

Book Description

In a society that worships youth and relegates its seniors to second-class citizen status, many elderly women end up ignored, mourning their lost youth. It doesn't have to be that way, says Dr. Ruth Harriet Jacobs, Remarkable Aging Smart Person and self-proclaimed troublemaker. Her solution: Be An Outrageous Older Woman. A unique guide to living it up in the senior years, this feisty book addresses the many issues faced by older women in a sassy, humorous and yes, even outrageous way. Drawing from her personal experience and from years of meticulous research, Dr. Jacobs covers such areas as:

Sexuality: an A-to-Z list of different ways to keep the fires of passion burning
Reinventing yourself
Having fun on a tight budget
Fostering relationships and social groups
Being outrageous with your descendants
The benefits and bonuses of aging -- the most freedom since puberty

Much, much more

Filled with practical advice and innovative ideas, Be an Outrageous Older Woman gives readers the knowledge and inspiration they need to live as first-class citizens and make their golden years shine.

Customer Reviews:

SHE'S INSPIRATIONAL.......2007-04-08

Ruth Jacobs has written a timeless book --- I think it will continue to be relevant to women for many years to come. In fact, it was so relevant to me personally that I quoted her a number of times in my own book. You won't be disappointed --- she writes well on a variety of topics. Pamela D. Blair, Author The Next Fifty Years: A Guide for Women at Mid-Life And Beyond

an outrageously good book.......2005-05-18

Thanks to Ruth Jacobs for this liberating book. Far too many people give up the fight when they hit certain age milestones. But why become "old" simply because you no longer succumb to the siren song of corporate marketers. Which is one of the main reasons older people are considered irrelevant--you're not as easily manipulated by advertising pitches as you were when you were younger. So, let this book be your companion as you fight the good fight against stereotypes.

Finally Be Your Fabulous SELF at Fifty or Older!.......2004-02-11

This is a terrific guide written by a "Power-Granny" (--my term for and outrageous older woman of any age--)!

Ruth Harriet Jacobs has faced the boogeymen of age with courage and humor, and she generously shares her wisdom in this book.

It's a guide that covers everything from turning your "rage" (at becoming invisible as you age, etc.), into your own brand of
out-rage-eousness.

If you're feeling depressed about any aspect of growing older, this book will help lift your spirits and give you new ideas on ways to get the most out of this stage of life.

Reviewer: Linda Painchaud

10 Star winner.......2003-04-10

I am so glad I ordered this book. Was looking on Amazon.com for books about feisty older women and beside the book I love about when I am an old woman I shall wear purple I came across this book and grabbed it.

And I am so glad I did. The book is packed with wonderful empowering information on every facit of ones life if they are a woman over age fifty and not wanting to attend pity parties but wanting to grab life by the whatever and trek on for the second half of our lives.

Chapter Two Changing Identity was what I wanted and needed. Part Two of the book is excellent because it addresses how to choose wise helpers and the issue of paid work. Part Three has a great piece on being creative with ones life and just having fun. Oh and sex...

Because I live a simple lifestyle called Voluntary Simplicity I appreciated and gleaned valuable information in Part Four about housing oneself be it solo or with others. And the section on economizing offered me some ideas I didn't even know of and I have been simple living since the early 80's.

There is a nice section on Bereavement and being Politically Outrageous (I so agree) and the benefits and bonuses of aging, which is something I am learning about and appreciating.

If you library doesn't have a copy buy them one, and buy a copy for your home library since it is a book that you will (I guarantee) read and re read often and always learn something new from.

For older women who are not afraid of life.......2003-04-07

Two of my favorite women were the late actresses Ruth Gordon and Roz Russell who stared in a favorite movie of mine "Auntie Mame". Both women would have loved this book because its a book with attitude. Attitude is something older women either are afraid of or embrace. And the author is a woman I would like as a friend because she is upfront and dares talk about things that some think older women shouldn't talk about.

The book is full of really useful information and about a variety of subjects from sex, money and housing to family and life in general and how to take more risks and get more out of life. Chapter 10 Having Fun is a good example. The author says "The truth is that you can have a lot of fun being a thorn in the flesh of those who do not do right by you or others. You have a sense of humor that can sustain you through tough times" and she goes on to show how you can combine fun with social action. She also knows how to use the fine art of sarcasm which is almost a lost art.

Also like her sections on affordable housing and how to be creative with housing. And how to be creative when it comes to travel and lodging. It was so great to read where she to is a user of hostels when traveling. Hostels are a common sight in Europe and in some areas here in the West.

And I agree with her that there are so many ways to make some extra money that simply requires a frontier spirit. Like picking up recyclable bottles and cans when we are out doing errands or on a walk. I wear a small backpack when I am out walking so that I can pick up pop cans that people toss away and not only do I help keep the roadside clean I make a few extra dollars a week doing so.

Like the people in my local simple living group the author shows how using beauty colleges or chain hair cut outlets can save money. And dollar stores can get you many of the same items for a dollar that you pay more for at a drug or grocery store. Or on page 221 where she says that instead of paying money you cant afford or don't want to spend talking to someone on the phone whose voice you really do not need to hear, use email or send a written letter via the post office. And its more personal and you can write what you want and no more.

Her suggestions about shopping around for the best druggist where you can get the best prices on needed prescriptions is an excellent one. And asking your physician for samples of the drugs you take that the drug makers give him/her can save money.

The chapters on Outrageous Friendships and Companionships is awesome and something those who really do not want to be alone could learn a lot from. It is information those with a variety of friends already know.

Book Description

The first African American to publish a book in the South, the author of the first female slave narrative in the United States, the father of black nationalism in America--these and other founders of African American literature have a surprising connection to one another: they all hailed from the state of North Carolina.

This collection of poetry, fiction, autobiography, and essays showcases some of the best work of eight influential African American writers from North Carolina during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his introduction, William L. Andrews explores the reasons why black North Carolinians made such a disproportionate contribution (in quantity and lasting quality) to African American literature as compared to what other southern states with larger African American populations produced. The authors in this anthology parlayed both the advantages and disadvantages of their North Carolina beginnings into sophisticated perspectives on the best and the worst of which humanity, in the South and the North, was capable. They created an African American literary tradition unrivaled by that of any other state in the South.

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