The life of Harriet Jacobs is one of the most tragic stories of our history. After becoming a writer, she wrote about her time growing up in the household of her master in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She faced a lot of fear and a great deal of abuse from the family that she served. However, these spreads only show readers a small glimpse of her experience as an in-house slave, and her story is told from her perspective. I felt that telling her story as if we were hearing it from her was an effective way of helping readers understand the density of her situation.
