This is one of the most important documents of American literature. There would be no Uncle Tom's Cabin without it. There would be no Beloved without it. It's a terrifying life story of indignities and survival, an American Anne Frank. ( )

I was really touched by Jacob's narrative. I liked reading from a female's point of view... very interesting. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/m... ( )

This book moved me. The true life story of this womans fight for freedom, for not only herself and her children was more than she expected even in the Free North. I love that at although she tells her story, she is very polite about the whole thing and she never reveals too much, as a lady would never do that. It just goes to show how the times have changes. ( )

The grace and the dignity with which Jacobs recounts her life story—living as a slave in the American South in the 1840s, and enduring seven years in a hiding place reminiscent of that endured by the Franks a century later, before she could escape to the North—is absolutely humbling. Were I in a situation one quarter as bad as she was, I don't know if I could be as temperate in her descriptions of people as Jacobs was. The writing style situates it very much within the kind of sentimental/Gothic genre so beloved of the nineteenth century. At times, that makes the dialogue Jacobs attributes to people a little hard to swallow—it can be almost Brontean in tone—but the knowledge that she was no doubt refining absolutely vile and hateful speech so that the work could be published at all does counterbalance that. A sobering and horrific read, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl should be required reading. ( )