"With beautiful sensitivity to language, Wald offers a unique blend of nuanced textual analysis and historical interpretation. The result is a provocative and well researched account of national stories and the concept of personhood."--Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law School

Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. Neither Citizen Nor Alien: National Narratives, Frederick Douglass ,and the Politics of Self-Definition 14
2. "As From a Faithful Mirror": Pierre, Our Nig, and Literary Nationalism 106
3. "The Strange Meaning of Being Black": The Souls of Black Folk and the Narrative of History 172
4. A "Losing-Self Sense": The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity 237
Coda: An American "We" 299
Notes 305
Selected Bibliography 353
Index 375

Priscilla Wald is Assistant Professor of English at Columbia University and a contributing editor to American Literary History