“The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride, is believed by some scholars to be the first novel ever published by an African-American woman,” and this month, it will be reissued for the first time since its initial printing in 1865. “But the republication has stirred a dispute between its editors… and the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.,” who believes that he discovered a published novel by an African-American woman six years older than Slave Bride.