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N.H. to Honor First African-American Novelist

Cover for the Penguin USA version of <i>Our Nig</i>
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Cover for the Penguin USA version of Our Nig

New Hampshire indentured servant-turned-novelist Harriet Wilson wrote Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black more than a century ago.

The work is the first known publication by an African American. Wilson will become the first person of color in New Hampshire history to have a monument in her likeness.

The book was first published in 1859 and was re-discovered and published again in the 1980s. Wilson is now considered the mother of the African-American novelist tradition.

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