{"product_id":"the-life-and-times-of-hannah-crafts-the-true-story-of-the-bondwomans-narrative-isbn-9780062334749","title":"The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/i\u003e, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in \u003ci\u003eThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts\u003c\/i\u003e, he\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003efinally tells her story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this remarkable enslaved woman biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHecimovich establishes the case for authorship of \u003ci\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/i\u003e by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt once a detective story, a literary chase, and a work of African American history, \u003ci\u003eThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts\u003c\/i\u003e discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into the Civil War era.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis definitive biography finally tells her full story, revealing:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA Literary Detective Story:\u003c\/b\u003e Follow the decade-long investigation that pieced together faint clues from diaries, account books, and census records to solve one of American literature’s biggest mysteries.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe First Black Female Novelist:\u003c\/b\u003e Discover the true identity of Hannah Bond “Crafts,” an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her skills in secret opposition to a system designed to deny her humanity.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eLost Voices of Slavery:\u003c\/b\u003e Learn the stories of the five enslaved women whose real experiences of love, friendship, and betrayal were summoned into fiction, rescuing them from being stolen from history.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eFugitive Slave Narrative:\u003c\/b\u003e Uncover the history behind \u003ci\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/i\u003e, a manuscript written in hiding after a daring escape from a North Carolina plantation on the eve of the Civil War.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\"Furman University English professor Hecimovich (\u003cem\u003ePuzzling the Reader\u003c\/em\u003e) delivers a captivating biography of Hannah Crafts. Part literary detective story, part suspenseful escape narrative, this impressive account ties together its many disparate threads into a riveting whole. It’s a must-read.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"An absorbing work of historical and literary excavation.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts\u003c\/em\u003e may be one of the most important case studies ever written in how to search for and find an unknown author from clues she left in her fiction and from fleeting traces of her in family archives and memories. For two decades after Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered \u003cem\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/em\u003e, Gregg Hecimovich pieced together historical fact and fictionalized versions to situate Hannah Crafts in a particular family of enslavers. Gregg's dramatic findings verifying Gates’s discovery are clarifying, thrilling, and provocative, demanding we return to \u003cem\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/em\u003e anew.\u003cem\u003e” \u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHollis Robbins, author of Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Decades of sleuthing in the archives yielded the astonishing finds that lie behind \u003cem\u003eThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts\u003c\/em\u003e, Gregg Hecimovich’s spellbinding new biography. At once a mystery, a thriller, and an elegy, this book is a riveting reconstruction of the life—and literary influences--of the author of \u003cem\u003eThe Bondwoman’s Narrative\u003c\/em\u003e (1858), the first novel written by a Black woman in the United States.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJill Lepore, author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Riveting . . . . The resulting story is an inspired amalgam of genres — part thriller, part mystery and part biography. What emerges is a tale of a woman who was determined to be the protagonist of her story, regardless of what her society had in store for her. . . . [B]ooks like Hecimovich’s are a vital resource for readers who wish to engage with themselves and the wider world.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTope Folarin, Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Interspersed with photos, descriptions of pertinent historical events, drawings, and digitized archival documents, this excellent biography will appeal to many readers.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Hecimovich has a mission: to shed light on those Black people who had been forced to live and labor in the shadows of others and had died unknown, their stories not just unwritten but unremembered…. Taken together, these fragile papers, newspapers, and genealogies provide Hecimovich and thus the contemporary reader with a powerful sense of what once existed, what the enslaved suffered, and what and who have been lost to history.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrenda Wineapple, New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890694320357,"sku":"NP9780062334749","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062334749.jpg?v=1730233863","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-life-and-times-of-hannah-crafts-the-true-story-of-the-bondwomans-narrative-isbn-9780062334749","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}