 | President Richard C. Levin and Henry Louis Gates Jr. are pictured with Hannah Crafts' "The Bondwoman's Narrative." |
Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of Harvard University's Department of Afro-American Studies, donated the manuscript of "The Bondwoman's Narrative" by Hannah Crafts to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at a ceremony on May 30.
The book is thought to be the first novel ever written by an African-American slave, and possibly by a black woman anywhere. The 301-page handwritten, autobiographical text was found at an auction by Gates, who authenticated it, edited it and had it published in April 2002.
Gates read from the narrative at the presentation of the manuscript on May 30. Also speaking at that event were President Richard C. Levin; Paul Gilroy, chair of Yale's Department of African-American Studies; and University Librarian Alice Prochaska.
A prominent literary scholar and a member of the Yale College Classs of 1973, Gates is director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research and is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. His widely acclaimed books include "The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism," for which he won the American Book Award in 1989, and "Colored People," a memoir published in 1994. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has received the National Humanities Award and the MacArthur Prize.
T H I S
Alumnus donates first novel
by an African-American slave 
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