Our Nig -

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Résumé :
Considered the first novel by a female African-American, Our Nig was ignored upon first publication in 1859 and lost for more than 100 years. The novel achieved national attention when it was rediscovered and reprinted in 1983. Our Nig tells the story of Frado growing up as an indentured servant in the antebellum northern United States. Like Our Nig number of novels and other works of fiction of the period were in some part based on real-life events, including Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall; Louisa May Alcott's Little Women; or even Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette.

Biographie:
Born Harriet E. Hattie Adams in Milford, New Hampshire, she was the mixed-race daughter of Margaret Ann (or Adams) Smith, a washerwoman of Irish ancestry, and Joshua Green, an African-American hooper of barrels of mixed African and Indian ancestry. After her father died when Hattie was young, her mother abandoned Hattie at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., a well-to-do Milford farmer connected to the Hutchinson Family Singers. As an orphan, Adams was bound by the courts as an indentured servant to the Hayward family, a customary way for society at the time to arrange support and education for orphans. The intention was that, in exchange for labor, the orphan child would be given room, board and training in life skills, so that she could later make her way in society.