I couldn’t believe I was holding it, procured so easily from the public library: “The only known novel by a female African-American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere,”read the cover jacket of The Bondwoman’s Narrative. Harvard Professor Henry Gates, Jr. who laid hold of the original 300-page handwritten manuscript launched an extraordinary quest to unmask the pseudonym of Hannah Crafts. Taking the clues he left, Professor Gregg Hecimovich from Winthrop University located the novelist in history after an assiduous ten-year pursuit of the sweet reward. Hannah Bond was the mulatto house slave who fled a North Carolina plantation disguised as a man and lived to tell her story cast in part fiction.

I have always felt a pull toward the African-American odyssey through slavery. The female slave experienced double jeopardy not only for her race but also for her sexual vulnerability. In our look at the psychology and emotional challenge of living under oppression, I’d like to beckon to light the invisible greatness of a woman who made her way out of bondage with pen as she did with her feet.

The above is a snippet of this very interesting narrative from the Blog, A Holistic Journey,  for full story: Greatness, Part 6: The Bondwoman’s Narrative of Slavery
http://holisticwayfarer.com/2013/12/02/greatness-part-6-the-bondwomans-narrative-of-slavery/