The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Gregg Hecimovich: A Book Review

 

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative

Author: Gregg Hecimovich

Genre: History, Nonfiction, Biography 

Publisher: Ecco

Release Date: 2023

Pages: 430

Source: Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

      In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, hefinally tells her story.

      In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.

      Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.

At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into Civil War.

      My Review: Hannah Crafts was the first African American female novelist. Even though her work was written before the Civil War, her novel was not published until 2002. She penned the bestselling The Bondwoman’s Narrative. However, very little is known about Hannah Crafts except that she was a slave. In The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, the biography attempts to unravel the mystery of Hannah Crafts.

      In The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, Mr. Hecimovich believes that Hannah Crafts is actually Hannah Bond. She may have been the daughter of the slave owner, Lewis Bond. Hannah Bond eventually became owned by John Hill Wheeler. During her time in bondage, she learned to read and write. In 1857, she escaped captivity by fleeing to the North. The biography also illuminates Hannah Crafts’ life after her escape. Therefore, I found these details to be very fascinating, and I could not help but feel sorry for her.

       Overall, this was a very long and drawn out biography. I did not really find The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts to be comprehensive. It jumps around on various topics. It also seemed like there was less focus on Hannah Bond. Instead, it focused mostly on the Wheeler household and its female slaves. Therefore, it should have been much shorter and more attention paid to Hannah Crafts. Nevertheless, it illuminates how remarkable and strong Hannah Crafts was. I had never heard of The Bondwoman’s Narrative, and it makes me want to read her novel sometime in the future. I also hope that there will be more future studies on her. I recommend this biography for fans of Harriet, The Moses of Her People, Sojourner Truth, and Letters from a Slave Girl!

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars