SOURCE: “I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives,” in From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative, University of Illinois Press, 1991, pp. 3-16.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1979, Stepto discusses Northup's work as an example of an integrated slave narrative that places documents authenticating the slave experience into the tale.

The strident, moral voice of the former slave recounting, exposing, appealing, apostrophizing, and above all remembering his ordeal in bondage is the single most impressive feature of a slave narrative. This voice is striking because of what it relates, but even more so because the slave's acquisition of that voice is quite possibly his only permanent achievement once he escapes and casts himself upon a new and larger landscape. In their most elementary form, slave narratives are full of other voices which are frequently just as responsible...