incidents in the life of a slave girl -- #2 [Jacobs && credibility]

The passage that I`ve chose in which Jacobs is using her own honesty to establish her credibility is; “In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny” (Harriet Jacobs, 52).

In the passage above, Jacobs is establishing the credibility by actually saying what would happen if the infants were girl. She knows for sure that their life would be somewhat like hers because she is a girl herself. She is doing this to allow the readers to know that what she says is really true by putting her own knowledge of being a girl and what happens to the girls into her writing.

I believe that many things in the writing establishes Jacob`s credibility because how can anyone really write the explicit things that she does when you have not even experienced what she has. Why would one want to write about something like this when they have no idea of the facts? How could one not actually believe in what Jacobs has to say about her slave life?