Tracing the revisions Frederick Douglass made as his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) metamorphosed into My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and ultimately into the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892), the author suggests that, while much attention has focused on Douglass’s seizing a “forbidden literacy” in transforming himself from object to subject, the crucial, and ever-increasing, role of African American vernacular traditions in his writing should be recognized.

hile much of the critical attention paid to Frederick Douglass addresses his use of literacy to find voice and being in his ascendancy from slave to man, his employment of vernacular tradition to tell his story in his own way often goes unnoted.1 An examination of the revisions Douglass made as his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) metamorphosed into My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and ultimately into the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892) reveals a skilled writer giving increasing attention to traditions within the circle that validate the cultural legitimacy of his African American antecedents. From edition to edition Douglass expanded scenes in which an African-derived presence manifested in vernacular atavisms became an alternative to the logocentrism that erased or devalued African American expression. Why, then, do most readings of his life story focus mainly on Douglass's relationship to the written word? typical critical paradigm reads Douglass as a black object transforming itself into subject by seizing a forbidden literacy. A sampling of some of the many fine scholars espousing this view includes Lisa Yun Lee, who notes, The connection between the power of thinking and speech is realized as Douglass the silent marginalized man transitions to active individual when a mistress cracks an opening in the white discourse. She offers to teach him to read(55); such a sampling would also include Eric Sundquist, who observes that Douglass's autobiographical writ-