Contents -- Introduction -- Preface -- "Tryin' to Get Over": Narrative Strategy in Equiano's Autobiography -- Individual and Collective Selves Portrayed in Wright's Black Boy -- Tell Freedom as Analogue to Black Boy -- Agostinho Neto's Sagrada esperança -- "The Act of Speaking in Tongues": Communal Presence and Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin -- A Radical Iconography: From Harriet Jacobs to Assata Shakur -- Doubling Exposure with Inadmissible Evidence -- Audre Lorde and Matrilineal Diaspora: "moving history beyond nightmare into structures for the future . . ." -- Conclusion: Skeins of Self and Skin -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.