“‘The Regulations of Robbers’ is an impressive investigation of legal history that illuminates instances of slave agency and resistance from within the very mechanisms that legitimized the system of chattel bondage. This is a deft, well-written study that highlights the sort of testimony often overlooked in conventional histories of slavery.”
—Felipe Smith, Tulane University

“I read ‘The Regulations of Robbers’ with delight. Accomando’s decision to read the published narratives of fairly well-known former slaves in concert with legal documents of their time was smart. Her ability to carefully analyze these works and offer insightful interpretations was impressive. Her employment of multiple consciousness (a concept that creates a compelling potpourri of womanist, feminist, and critical race theories) is just the right choice to stimulate our intellectual imaginations of legal fictions not only about slavery and resistance but about an abundance of other kinds of received knowledge as well.”
—Frances Smith Foster, author of Witnessing Slavery

“This is a very strong work. The chapters on Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs present clear, cogent arguments on race, representation, and legal fictions. Accomando uncovers little-known facts and makes judicious use of them for her arguments. Any class studying nineteenth-century American literature or American autobiography and the construction of authorship should be interested in Accomando’s packaging of Truth.”
—Valerie Lee, The Ohio State University