Wednesday, April 25, 7:00 PM
The Harriet Wilson Book Project
Nottingham, NH: The Blaisdell Memorial
Library in Nottingham, NH has received a grant along with
the Chesley Memorial Library in Northwood from the New
Hampshire Humanities Council to co-sponsor a
thought-provoking discussion on the book Our Nig
(believed to be the first novel published by an African
American woman) by Harriet Wilson. The discussion will be
facilitated by Barbara A. White and Mabell Barnette who have
both been involved in researching the book and the author.
Copies of the book to read ahead of time are available at
the library.
Rediscovering Harriet Wilson
Celebrating African American History Month
Manchester, NH: In 1859, Harriet Wilson, a mulatto woman from
New Hampshire, published a novel with the stated hope of earning sufficient
money simply to survive. Instead, her novel Our Nig; or
Sketches From the Life of A Free Black, became a powerful and controversial
narrative that continues to touch and unsettle readers around the world.
In celebration of African American History Month, UNH
Manchester will host a discussion titled Rediscovering
Harriet Wilson at
noon on February 28 (TODAY). The
discussion will be led by JerriAnne Boggis, Project Director
of the Harriet Wilson Project. The
Harriet
Wilson Project seeks to raise awareness of Harriet
Wilson and her literary work, to educate the public on her
contribution to American history and her contribution to
American literature, and to publicly honor her for her
accomplishments. The discussion is free and open to the
public. It will be held at UNH Manchester, 400 Commercial
Street, in the third floor auditorium. Parking is available
at metered parking spaces or at a parking garage on Canal
Street. UNH Manchester, the university’s urban campus,
brings undergraduate and graduate programs to people who
live and work in New Hampshire. Please visit us on the web
at
www.unhm.unh.edu.
Harriet Wilson’s New England: Race, Writing, and Region.
New release by the University Press of New England, July 2007.
This
volume, edited by JerriAnne Boggis, Eve Allegra Raimon, and Barbara
A. White, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., advances efforts
to correct the historical record about the racial complexity and
richness characteristic of rural New England’s past.
With this collection, the first devoted entirely to Wilson and
her novel, the editors have compiled essays that seek to understand
Wilson within New England and New England as it might have appeared
to Wilson and her contemporaries. The contributors include prominent
historians, literary critics, psychologists, librarians, and
diversity activists. Harriet Wilson’s New England joins
other critical works in the emerging field known as the New
Regionalism in resurrecting historically hidden ethnic communities
in rural New England and exploring their erasure from public memory.
It offers new literary and historical interpretations of Our Nig
and responds to renewed interest in Wilson’s dramatic account of
servitude and racial discrimination in the North.
Read more…
