Early Black Autobiography: The Suffering of Individual and Community: Frederick Douglass autobiography

Abstract

Autobiography in the 19^th century onwards became a tool in the hands of the sufferers and an instrument for resistance and revolution. The voiceless and subalterns received a voice through the genre to express their agonies; pains and it emerged as a platform to openly blame the establishments. Slavery the darkest reality of Afro American political, social and economic discourse came into picture with the spread of Autobiographies. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass- Frederick Douglass is the milestone autobiography of world literature in general and black Afro Americans in particular. Frederick Douglass who lived as a slave and later served honourably as the United State Marshall in the Columbia District put his memories in his autobiography published in 1881. He could give details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in the third volume of his autobiography which he could not do in first two volumes under the fear to his life from his masters. The autobiography is a vivid picture of a horrible account of slavery and its dark history during the time of slavery. The autobiography is filled with unbelievable and tragically intensified experiences of Douglass as a slave. The research paper focus on the struggle the writer went through as an individual and a part of a vast community whose destiny was tied with the slavery, it is an effort to analyse the conditions of the slaves and how the autobiography became inspiration to all hopeless and powerless slaves to overcome fear, trauma and resist with the evil of slavery.