author
Harriet E. Wilson
1825–1900
Best known for Our Nig (1859), she broke new ground as the first African American woman known to publish a novel in the United States. Her life and work offered a sharp, early look at racism in the North as well as the struggle to survive as a free Black woman.
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About the author
Born in Milford, New Hampshire, on March 15, 1825, she is remembered as a pioneering African American writer. Her novel Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published in Boston in 1859, and is widely recognized as the first novel published in the United States by an African American woman.
The book draws on the hardships of her own early life and stands out for showing that racial cruelty and exploitation were not limited to the slave South. That honesty, along with its blend of fiction and autobiography, has made Our Nig an important work in American literary history.
Wilson died on June 28, 1900. Although her writing was overlooked for many years, later scholars brought renewed attention to her achievement, and she is now seen as an essential early voice in African American literature.