To Tell a Free Story by William L. Andrews PAPERBACK 9780252060335

To Tell a Free StoryThe First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865\nAuthor(s): William L. Andrews\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Illinois Press, United States\nImprint: University of Illinois Press\nISBN-13: 9780252060335, 978-0252060335\nSynopsis\nTo Tell A Free Story traces in unprecedented detail the history of Black autobiography from the colonial era through Emancipation. Beginning with the 1760 narrative by Briton Hammond, William L. Andrews explores first-person public writings by Black Americans. Andrews includes but also goes beyond slave narratives to analyze spiritual biographies, criminal confessions, captivity stories, travel accounts, interviews, and memoirs. As he shows, Black writers continuously faced the fact that northern whites often refused to accept their stories and memories as sincere, and especially distrusted portraits of southern whites as inhuman. Black writers had to silence parts of their stories or rely on subversive methods t.