Piano is a Ph.D. candidate at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. In this essay, she investigates the complexity of Frederick Douglass' autobiography as a text that illustrates Douglass' ability to transform himself from an illiterate, oppressed slave to an educated, liberated free man.

Although Frederick Douglass wrote several autobiographies during his lifetime, none continues to have the lasting literary impact of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. From its publication in 1845 to its present status in the American literary canon, the Narrative has become one of the most highly acclaimed American autobiographies ever written. Published seven years after Douglass' escape from his life as a slave in Maryland, the Narrative put into print circulation a critique of slavery that Douglass had been lecturing on around the country for many years. Yet while the Narrative describes in vividdetail...