Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Despite being born into slavery, Linda Brent enjoys a happy childhood—until the deaths of her parents and kind mistress leave her an orphan and the property of the lascivious Dr. Flint. Linda becomes the target of his unwanted advances, which she temporarily evades by bearing the children of another man. But when Dr. Flint threatens to sell her children unless she submits, Linda hatches a desperate plan to escape, working to secure her children’s freedom as well as her own. Using the character Linda Brent to narrate her own life story, Harriet Ann Jacobs reveals the unparalleled struggles of an enslaved woman. Her harrowing account of perseverance and unimaginable bravery continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.