Harriet Jacobs

Throughout her career as a playwright, Lydia R. Diamond has boldly challenged assumptions about African American culture. In Harriet Jacobs, she turns one of the greatest American slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, into a penetrating, rousing work of theater. Jacobs's story-serialized in the New York Tribune until it was deemed too graphic, and eventually published in book form in 1861-exposed the sexual harassment and abuse of slave girls and women at the hands of their masters. Harriet Jacobs: A Play organically incorporates theatrical elements that extend the book's enormous power. Though harrowing, Harriet Jacobs undertakes the necessary task of reenvisioning a difficult chapter in American history.