Reclaimed from Associated Content...What Google doesn't like about an award-winning classic biography from Harper Collins, I don't know. I have never liked the kind of face images that fill up all the space with face, cutting out even the sides of the head; it always looks like a caricature.
Title: Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Author: Ann Petry
Publisher: Harper Collins
Date: 1955 (first edition), 1996 (paperback edition reviewed here)
Number of pages :242, plus index
Illustrations: none
Quote: “I never run my train off the track, and I never lost a single passenger.”
Harriet Ross Tubman was one of those people whose true stories are too unlikely to be printed as fiction. Going by the statistical odds, nobody could do what they did. Possibly things have been left out of their stories as we know the stories today. Nevertheless, the impossible thing was done.
Born a slave in Maryland in 1821, the girl Harriet Ross was marked for life by a head injury. It left her witha scar, a lifelong tendency toward narcolepsy, and apparently an unusual manner of speaking. She was a small, restless, hyperactive girl who preferred jobs usually done by boys or men. When she wore boys' clothes to suit the job, people thought she was a boy. Her intelligence would have been startling even if she hadn't been expected to die from her head injury. In 1840 men were supposed to hate strong, tough-minded women, but John Tubman, a free Black man, chose to marry Harriet although she was a slave who might have been sold away from him.
By this time the slave system was falling apart. In what were then western states, like Tennessee, there were still "wilderness" areas where ex-slaves could disappear in the untracked swamps or forests. Maryland was not one of those areas. An elaborate patrol system had developed to keep slaves from escaping. The country was well settled, over-farmed, populated by a decaying upper class who thought it was their neighborly duty to keep slaves in their places.
Virginia had outlawed all free citizens of African descent, actually banishing such people to places like, well, Maryland, with the express purpose of keeping men like John Tubman from marrying, buying, and emancipating women like Harriet. Maryland tolerated couples like the Tubmans but when Harriet worried about being sold and urged her husband to take her further north, John laughed, threatened to help bring her back to slavery if she tried to escape,, and shamelessly selected his next wife.
Harriet Tubman made her way to Philadelphia. We know the names of some of the abolitionists who helped her. John Tubman was probably more concerned with courting his second wife, presumably convincing her he wouldn't betray her as he'd threatened to do to Harriet, than with tracking Harriet down.
What will never be fully explained is how this unusual, surely conspicuous fugitive slave was able to spend the next twenty years repeatedly sneaking back into Maryland and leading other slaves out. Mostly she rescued members of her extended family, taking them first to Pennsylvania, later to Canada. She was both illiterate and narcoleptic. Something had to have been wrong with her head for her even to think of trying what she did. Well, something was. And she succeeded. Those who whispered about her being a supernatural spirit, perhaps a reincarnation of Moses, trusted that they'd be safe with her even if she collapsed and lay "sleeping" for hours while they were being pursued. Somehow they always were.
By the time the Civil War broke out, other women of Harriet Tubman's age were considered "old" and expected to act like grandmothers, rocking and knitting. Perhaps because she was already a legend, Mrs. Tubman was not allowed to act "old." She served in the U.S. Army as both a spy and a nurse.
She never received even the pathetic wages regular (male) soldiers got, and never retired. She had bought a house and some land; she raised vegetables and sold them on the streets to make the house payments. She received some money for talking about her experiences. Her stories were collected and published as books, which she was never able to read. John Tubman died first, and Mrs. Tubman married a fellow veteran. He was already dying; he never collected his wages either, and had nothing of material value to give his wife. Harriet Tubman and her parents depended on neighbors' donations of food to balance their own diet.
Novelist Ann Petry fleshes out these facts with fictional details that show some of the ways Harriet Tubman's adventures might have been pulled off. Her version of the story is generally accepted as fact-based enough that some libraries classify this book as nonfiction. Petry's matter-of-fact narrative style, full of color, conversation, and even menus, brings the story to life for young readers, even if it is fictional life.
The books that were based on transcriptions of Harriet Tubman's own stories are no longer in print, though they ought to be. This book is still in print.
She was such an amazing figure. Priscilla, I replied to your question on my site, will try to copy it here - Priscilla, I live on the west coast of Vancouver Island in what WAS a rainforest. We never used to have to water anything, there was so much rain, and fog and dew. Now we are in constant drought - the climate crisis claims another area. The sad thing is that we have some corporate businesses using most of the water resources (same story everywhere) and not paying their proportionate share, while the residents are conserving water usage and paying more. No rain in a rainforest is a clear statement of where we are in terms of climate ill health. Yet nothing much is changing. We are still spewing emissions everywhere. I prefer rain. You are lucky you still have that. The Blue Ridge mountains are said to be beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThey are, Sherry. Thank you for visiting the web site, and as always, you'd be welcome to visit in real life...I just went into the older part of the house while the sun was shining and I wouldn't have to connect a circuit to sort through some stored yarn. As if it had been watching on a hidden camera, a big dark cloud followed. Now it looks about ready to rain again after a 19-hour break. Come and rehydrate! It's not as if we *wanted* to hoard all the rain.
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