A Black Woman's Odyssey Through Russia and Jamaica: The Narrative of Nancy Prince

Prince was among some 6500 free blacks who lived in Massachusetts in the decades before the Civil War. A genteel, literate woman working for religious, abolitionist and feminist causes, she nevertheless felt the weight of prejudice in her native land (she describes plainly but forcefully the adversity that faced her)--and its absence in Czarist Russia, where she spent nearly a decade with her husband. Having arrived in Russia as a sailor, Nero Prince became one of a small group of blacks who served in the Imperial court. Although the writing is stilted overall, the author vividly describes local Russian customs, as well as her experiences of the St. Petersburg flood of 1824 and the Decembrist Revolt. She returned to America, and, becoming widowed, went to Jamaica as missionary to the newly emancipated blacks there. But, disillusioned by the exploitation of the Jamaicans by her fellow missionaries and others, she set sail for home. Her voyage was marked by a near shipwreck and an attempt by the ship's treacherous captain to sell her into slavery. This adventurous woman offers a singular perspective on the African experience in America. Illustrated. (Aug . )