Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion Book

First off, be aware that this volume does not contain the text of Jacobs' life itself; rather, it is a collection of essays about Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Like most essay collections, it is a somewhat mixed bag. While all the essays offer some perspective on the text, some are more valuable than others. Both Jacqueline Goldsby's and Jean Fagan Yellin's articles contrast Harriet's life with that of her brother John S. (published at almost exactly the same time). Both do a fine job of suggesting how the significant variances between the texts can be accounted for by the different aims of each, as well as by the different larger discourse communities within which they situate themselves (heroic, masculinist escape narrative for John S., sentimental and domestic fiction, among others, for Harriet). In some ways the most important and striking contribution belongs to P. Gabrielle Foreman, who hypothesizes that Flint (not Sands) may have been the father of Harriet's first child. To her credit, Foreman goes a long way toward explaining why this sensational claim should be taken seriously and what its consequences are for modern readers of Jacobs' text. (An article not in this collection, by Novian Whitsitt, printed in the journal Frontiers, takes this observation even farther, producing a truly impressive and persuasive re-reading of Jacobs' text that situates this strange choice of obscuring who the father of Benny is in a variety of discourses.) Deborah Garfield's contribution discusses the issue of orality and seductive language, both in abolitionist presentations and Jacobs' text. Donald Gibson's essay reads Jacobs' text in conjunction with the other great escape narrative--Frederick Douglass'--and contrasts how each narrative constructs itself in relation to the discourse of domesticity. And Anita Goldman's fine essay usefully pairs Jacobs with Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, casting new light on both texts. These essays, all the stronger contributions to this collection, have in common a need to contextualize and provide more historical background for Jacobs' text. Theory makes an appearance in several of them, but more as support for the historical observations made. All the essays in the book have something to offer, but these contributions in particular are valuable for their devotion to historicizing the discourses that both shaped and were reshaped by Jacobs' Incidents.