Indeed, Barbara White has corroborated almost all of the details concerning the Bellmonts, whose nonfictional name is Hayward. Throughout the text Wilson makes it clear that Frado's life is based on her own. While the child born in her seduction narrative dies, her second child, Frado, lives it is Frado's story that Wilson narrates. Yet, rather than dying, Mag marries a black man in order to survive. Wilson opens her tale with the seduction of “lonely Mag Smith… alone and inexperienced… as she merged into womanhood, unprotected, uncherished, uncared for.” Her language mirrors, or perhaps parodies, the conventional seduction tale–the isolated young maiden, without a loving family to guide her, falls prey to “the voice” of her ravisher who then leaves her to her fate. While a quiet debate has emerged about how to classify Our Nig, critics agree that Wilson blends aspects of sentimental fiction, autobiography, and slave narratives. The hybrid form of Our Nig reflects the multi–pronged nature of Wilson's critiques. She extended the slave narrative's attack on chattel relations below the Mason–Dixon line by offering a scathing revelation of northern racism and a forceful critique of the then–sacred realm of domesticity. Wilson addressed race relations in the North. Wilson's Our Nig became the first novel by an African American to be published in the United States. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's short story “The Two Offers” appeared, and Harriet E. The year 1859 was a year of important “firsts” for African American women's writing.
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