@article{321581,
      recid = {321581},
      author = {Collins, Julia C., and Andrews, William L., and Kachun,  Mitchell A.},
      title = {The curse of caste, or, The slave bride : a rediscovered  African American novel /},
      publisher = {Oxford University Press,},
      address = {Oxford ;},
      pages = {lxviii, 139 p. ;},
      year = {2006},
      abstract = {In 1865, The Christian Recorder, the national newspaper of  the African Methodist Episcopal Church, serialized The  Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride, a novel written by Mrs.  Julia C. Collins, an African American woman living in the  small town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The first novel  ever published by a black American woman, it is set in  antebellum Louisiana and Connecticut and focuses on the  lives of a beautiful mixed-race mother and daughter whose  opportunities for fulfillment through love and marriage are  threatened by slavery and caste prejudice. The text shares  much with popular nineteenth-century womenʾs fiction, while  its dominant themes of interracial romance, hidden African  ancestry and ambiguous racial identity have parallels in  the writings of both black and white authors from the  period. Begun in the waning months of the Civil War, the  novel was near its conclusion when Julia Collins died of  tuberculosis in November of 1865. In this firs-ever book  publication of The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride, the  editors have composed a hopeful and a tragic ending,  reflecting two alternatives Collins almost certainly would  have considered for the closing of her unprecedented novel.  In their introduction, the editors offer the most complete  and current research on the life and community of an author  who left few traces in the historical record and provide  extensive discussion of her novelʾs literary and historical  significance. Collinsʾs published essays, which provide  intriguing glimpses into the mind of this gifted but  overlooked writer, are included in what will prove to be  the definitive edition of a major new discovery in African  American literature, religion, womenʾs history, community  life and race relations during the era of the United States  emancipation. Book jacket.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/321581},
}