Harriet Wilson most likely chose to open Our Nig with her mother’s history instead of Frado’s birth because the former’s past allows for a better understanding of why things ended up the way they did for Frado. Mag’s life was also comparable to that of Frado’s, in a way, because they are both considered outcasts. Mag was a white woman who had sex outside of wedlock and then married and had children with a black man, both of which shunned her from white society and made her “less of a woman” according to white feminine ideals; she is a woman, but she also isn’t because she’s lost the values or broken the rules “respectable” white women must uphold. Frado, born to a white mother and black father, is interracial; therefore, she’s black, but not