Slave narratives and abolitionist books share much in common in terms of their descriptions of the institution of slavery, how slavery is entrenched in American society, and how slaves struggle to overcome the psychological humiliation and physical degradation that slavery entails. Frederick Douglass's (1845) Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs's (1861) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl both capture the daily cruelty and overall theme of slavery. These two slave narratives present a poignant picture of what it was like to live as a slave, showing also how slaves attempted to escape. Douglass and Jacobs also show how slaves managed to keep their families as together as possible, struggling against all odds to do so because of the systematic means by which whites enabled and even encouraged the dismantling of African-American families.

However, there are some core differences between Douglass's (1845) and Jacobs's (1861)...
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