Abstract

Nancy Gardner Prince began writing and self-publishing A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince in the 1850s, at a time when few African American women had the ability to do so. Her story tells of diaspora and of the systematic economic, cultural, and political oppression of free African Americans in the antebellum North. Raised by a mother unable to cope with the economic and emotional burden of raising eight children on her own, Prince spends much of her youth working as a domestic servant in white households. After a long, mostly unsuccessful struggle to maintain family unity, Prince makes the decision to improve her circumstances, marrying sailor Nero Prince after a brief courtship and ..