Jacobs

Reading in the first person made some of the facts in the book seem more realistic or as if it were happening right in front of you, but I personally thought the best reason to explain the validity of this slave-narrative, was that the author was black and lived her entire life as a slave or fleeing from slavery. It does more for the reader to just understand the background of our author Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent, than to focus on the perspective of the narration. A few things however, jumped out at me and could have only done so in a first person account. 

One of those things had to do with Linda's brother William who was owned by Mr. Sands. Even though he was a privileged slave, he desired escape like any other. A few thoughts get raised for me here. First, I better trust the narrative whether or not Linda Brent distinctively states this quote at the beginning:

"READER, be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts."

I am a bit of a skeptic, so although through history was I able to recognize the truth of this account, I tried to read this as if I was a native of 1850's America, and that quote right there could very well be a desperate ploy to get readers to believe in all the outrageousness going on in the story, especially since pro-slavery narratives (which were frequently published at the time) said otherwise. So, back to my original thought. Although Linda Brent was trying to expose the horrors of slavery, she didn't let it cloud the truth. There were slaves out there who lived pretty good lives because they were owned by "better" people, but contrary to what many southerners will tell you today, those privileged-slaves would have been happier if they could have dropped the suffix, even if they had to sacrifice the prefix.

All that being said, it was probably still way more beneficial to have a white author write about anti-slavery than it was a black author. Having an outside party feel sympathetic usually has more of an impact than hearing it straight from the oppressed, for believability reasons in those days. Now-a-days (most) people are well-informed about the cruelty and brutality of the slave-ownership era.