Harriet E. Adams Wilson is thought to be the very first Afro-American woman to have published a novel in English. In a period in which racial "firsts" have been heralded loudly and widely, as talismans drawn out to counter racist aspersions cast upon Afro-American culture as a whole, the rediscovery of Harriet Wilson's text and the authentication of her gender and racial identity have pushed back the starting point for fiction by Afro-American women from 1892 to 1859. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There. By "Our Nig." (1859) is a major example of genre fusion created by the writer's appropriation of a black, masculine, literary model (the slave narrative) and a white, female one (the sentimental novel). The result is a synthesis at once peculiarly black and female. The originality Wilson displays in...