"The choice is ours, then..."

29 May 2022: “After being ignored for many years, Our Nig has finally found its readers. Now the question remains: how will we, the readers of this book, respond to its appeal for a moral response to an unjust social system? If we respond by saying that these problems are in the past, then we violate Wilson’s achievement even as we celebrate it. The choice is ours, then. When we write our own stories in relation to this book and to our national history, will we write fiction or autobiography? If we are to honor Wilson’s achievement, then perhaps the time for fiction is over” (210).

Working on my Harriet Wilson entry and found the quotation above--from an essay by John Ernest--quite compelling and moving. It's been interesting and rewarding to do a deep dive on the critical conversation around this book. 

Work Cited

Ernest, John. “Losing Equilibrium: Harriet E. Wilson, Frado, and Me.” Harriet Wilson’s New England: Race, Writing, and Region, edited by JerriAnne Boggis, Eve Allegra Raimon, and Barbara A. White, U of New Hampshire P, 2007, pp. 203-211.