A review by bloodhoney
Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin

3.0

The first part was really good; I was excited to learn the real stories behind Jacobs' occasionally simplified or diluted biography. The second part could have been better--quite often I got lost, as it became a "this-then-that-then-she-moved-here" and I lost the thread more easily. I also wish that Yellin had speculated on parts of Jacobs' life, the parts that were not passed down to us, more--she hints that perhaps Jacobs took a lover after she went to freedom, but then also contradicted that view. I was hoping she would delve into Jacobs' narrative a little and speculate on Jacobs' relationship with her children's father and also her relationship with her master--the parts that she skipped over in her original biography and the parts that always worried me as a reader in the 21st century.