Mariko Arai has adapted Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl into a manga, according to Anime News Network. The series debuted online on manga serialization site Web Comic Action back in May, and released its first collected volume this past Friday.
The manga is based on the Japanese translation of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which chronicled the real life struggles of Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman born in 1813, who eventually gained freedom for both herself and her children in 1842. An active abolitionist, Jacobs began writing her autobiography after her escape to New York, and published it in 1861. The Japanese translation by Yuki Horikosh, published in 2013, became a best seller in 2017.
In an interview with Forbes, Horikosh explained her desire to publish the translation grew out of the realization that Jacobs’ story could be relevant to girls and women today.
“There is definitely an imbalance in Japanese society. There are many girls who live outside of Tokyo who can only see themselves as becoming a school teacher or a nurse, at best. They face adversity. But this is the story of a woman who was born a slave, who fought against all odds, who learned to read and write and eventually won her freedom. I hope that the girls and boys who read this realize that they can do anything they want, become who they want, if they apply themselves. There are people who’ve faced worse odds. This is a story about triumphing over adversity.”
While there are no plans yet to publish the manga for English audiences, it is available to read in Japanese here.
