Harriet Wilson

Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig: Or, Sketches from the life of a free black In a Two-story white house, north. Showing that Slavery's shadows fall even there. NY: Vintage, 2002.

Originally published in 1859. It was ignored for some time, then returned to small prominence by Henry Louis Gates around a century later. Our Nig appears to be the 1st novel published by a woman of African descent in English.

Wilson appears to have been born "a free black" in 1827 or 1828, though some records have her born as hearly as 1807.

The story recounts the life of an African American woman living under dire poverty and abusive conditions. Wilson starts with the mother, a white woman who gets pregant out of wedlock and falls into poverty when her lover dumps her. She marries an African-American, out of desperation and for his kindness, but he works himself to death within a few years, leaving her broke again, but with several children. She gives the kids away, and the rest of the story follows the career of her daughter Frado, who becomes informal prisoner and slave to a white family. Some of the family members are moderately kind, but none have the integrity to confront the lady of the house over her sadistic torment of "Our Nig," Frado.
Frado works all her waking hours without show of kindness, decent food, adequate clothing or shelter. She's deliberately kept from anything that might stimulate or educate her. She sickens as she matures, unsurprisingly.
Various family members die off, and Frado is finally adult and free to marry. She does so, hapless hubby dies, and the cycle continues.

The writing is smooth and unsentimental. Various circumstances of publication support the idea that this is an autobiography; it was at least presented as one. Use of the epithet "Nig" in the title, would have been less shocking in the 1840's when this was written, but it must have had an edge even then, especially with the possessive, and more especially given that it is also given as the name of the protagonist. The result is really a strikingly modern text.