A 14 page paper discussing why eighteenth and nineteenth century black writers have traditionally had such a hard time relating their experiences. It suggests that with the exception of the slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass's, early black writers tended to write for a primarily white readership out of self-preservation. The paper uses 10 secondary sources and 6 primary ones. A five page paper discussing Douglass' 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' in terms of whether the very fact that Frederick Douglass was literate in an era when almost no American blacks were, destroys his credibility as a spokesperson for black experience. The paper concludes that it is impossible to write a truly objective history, and the fact that Douglass work is tainted by Western ideology does not invalidate its truth.
Bibliography lists three sources.