![Cover for the Penguin USA version of <i>Our Nig</i>](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8dbcade/2147483647/strip/true/crop/200x306+0+0/resize/880x1346!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fprograms%2Fnewsnotes%2Ffeatures%2F2005%2Fjun%2Four_nig%2Fcover-b7658990594274b377e7ebc0a3310326c8c34bbe.jpg)
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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.
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