![]() ![]() Her history is situated also between literacy and illiteracy: it appears that she could write, but her testimonial is mediated by white abolitionists who are also authenticating her testimony by writing it for her. ![]() She is free in England but still technically a slave in Antigua, should she return. Mary Prince is an intermediate figure – of England and the Caribbean, of slavery and emancipation. ![]() And it is this fully present beingness of Mary Prince that makes her a powerful vehicle for anti-slavery. She is both a representative of slavery and its wrongs and absolutely herself, a full person and a character not a type. For me the most important aspect of the work is the distinctive, characterful, persuasive first-person voice of Mary herself. Representations of slavery did important work in the argument for abolition. Mary Prince’s story is an account by a freed slave of her experience in the Caribbean and the first book in England which tells the story of a black woman’s life. ![]()
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