Race and Authority: Building Racial Epistemologies in Nineteenth-Century British and Caribbean Women’s Writing is a project inspired by my conviction that reading race and reading bodies for race is one of the most challenging and complicated processes in which we participate. Equally, I believe representing race through works of fiction and accurately transcribing readings of race in life stories is next to impossible. My mistrust in our ability to accurately read and represent race led me to ask how writers think about the race of their characters or people in their narratives. My skepticism of representations of race motivated me to create a set of methodological tools that allow us to look at narrative techniques and the deployment of those techniques in texts. This project suggests that readers are encouraged to use those narrative techniques to see certain perspectives on race. Specifically, I look to the nineteenth century, when categories of racial difference are still in flux, to see how writers are reading and misreading race. In particular, this project uses four canonical or semi-canonical women writers — Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Seacole — and the narrative techniques within their texts to show how their narratives create a particular perspective on race or a racial epistemology. Throughout Race and Authority, I use narrative theory to name the kind of narrative technique that is doing the work of racialization — first-person narration, indirect discourse, and retrospective narration. By uncovering the racializing narrative technique, we can see how difficult it is to read race. These canonical writers have become representative in their literary fields, and their literary techniques continue to be used. This project asks readers to see how those narrative techniques become intertwined with racialization. Moreover, Race and Authority suggests that because these racializing narrative techniques have been understudied and the writings of these canonical authors have become representative of their literary field, it is imperative that we exercise skepticism toward the works’ racial epistemology.