The author, ex-slave Harriet Jacobs, speaks through her narrator Linda Brent to reveal a story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. A book-length narrative, it is often cited as the counterpart to Frederick Douglass' An American Slave, Written by Himself. Addressing white women in the North about the bondage of black women in the South, it focuses on five distinct phases in Linda Brent's life.