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N.H. to Honor First African-American Novelist

NPR | By Shannon Mullen

Published June 22, 2005 at 12:00 AM EDT

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