Voice of the Southern Slave

Paper Summary:

This paper shows how Houston A. Baker Jr. in his essay
"Autobiographical Acts and the Voice of the Southern Slave" addresses issues of the veracity and reliability of autobiographical narratives in the specific context of the slave era of the South. It explains how Baker writes about the southern slave narratives which emerged from that time in history. He asks how reliable are the autobiographical acts of southern slaves and examines the structure and origin of such narratives to find an answer.

From the Paper:

"Baker finds that the autobiographical impulse is part of the American tradition and began with the Puritans, and because of this connection, the impulse has about it some of the same sense of righteous purpose. Baker says that the white writer had a sense of being part of a new cultural experience. The white writer always thought of himself as capable of heading a new and great tradition, and they saw their works as having an importance and a permanence that added both credibility and weight to them. Baker finds, though, that there was a distinction between black and white culture that was seen in the narrative produced as well: Moved to introspection by the apparent "blankness" that surrounded him, the black, southern field slave had scarcely any a priori assumptions to act as stays in his quest for self-definition. He was a man of the diaspora, a displaced person imprisoned by an inhumane system (96)."

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