A review by texassippiwill
The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts by Gregg Hecimovich

hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

This is a good companion piece to 'The Bondwoman's Narrative'. I initially began reading this prior to 'The Bondwoman's Narrative' after seeing a news article describing the story of Hannah Crafts. It was about how she was deemed the first black female author and it intrigued me. The article initially led me to believe that this was a narrative retelling of the story but it was more of an informational piece. I think that is important to know because I was initially disappointed because I felt that it was just spoiling the story without really telling it. I also felt irritated by the fact that it felt like a whitewashing of her story because it seemed to initially only to refer to the Hannah as hypothetical, even though it was presented as a story proving that she wrote it. I ended up taking a step back and decided to read her actual book first. When I came back, this work was much more enjoyable. Even though it isnt necessarily an exciting read, it did have alot of really good information. There were some moments where I wanted more, because subjects such as "passing" would be brought up and the topic of how slavemasters used "passing" to their advantage at times would come up. The issue I had is that there wasn't much information given there and it was such a provoking subject to bring to light. That is why I feel there is a little left to be desired with this book. Nonetheless it is a good companion piece to the original novel and it does provide good subjects for further investigation. If you are going to read 'The Bondwoman's Narrative' and want further explanation of events within the text it's definitely worth taking a look at.