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Title: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson ISBN: 0-345-45627-0 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: the reviewer below should read the whole book
Comment: as to "questioning" the popular numbers for trips into the slave South and people led to freedom, Larson relies more on Tubman's *own* reports than on the writers (often WHITE by the way!) who had their own rationales for inflating the numbers in service of books sales and other political goals. Larson does not *reduce* Tubman's heroism (indeed the subtitle explicitly calls Tubman a "hero" ) what she does is highlight the fact that whether 70 or 300 were led to freedom by Harriet Tubman she was a hero.
The book is a celebration of an American life that draws on sources black, white, archival, family and tradition. The acknowledgments and the cover blurbs are thanks to a myriad of African Americans of all types. What those people did recognize and this reader below does not is that Larson used the truth and the historical record to make that heroism more than simply a popular opinion but an incontrovertible fact. We honor the past and its heroes by telling the TRUTH about them. Harriet Tubman didn't need myth then and she doesn't need it now. Her life was one of truth and faith, we owe her memory nothing less.
Rating: 1
Summary: Kate Larson
Comment: In her introduction, Larson says "We all believe we know Harriet Tubman" yet this knowledge is limited to the heroic myth of children's books. Yet in order to tell the true story of Harriet Tubman, Larson often doubts Tubman's own testimony and instead calls for evidence from "white sources" to corroborate Tubman's claims. Larson questions, for example, the fact that Tubman herself stated that she was born in 1825 and instead claims that there is no archival evidence to support this.
She then further questions the number of trips and the number of slaves that Tubman claims she freed.
I have always had my doubts of white scholars doing black history, and Larson's book proves me right. Larson doubts what black people stated, believed, and KNEW through both our own oral culture and history, and then comes along to say that she is going to tell us something more than just myth. If questioning numbers and doubting black historical actors is her version of history, we surely have not made it to the Promised Land.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Must Read
Comment: In her introduction, Larson says "We all believe we know Harriet Tubman" yet this knowledge is limited to the heroic myth of children's books. She does not seem real flesh and blood to us. Larson sets out to rectify this, and does so admirably. She spent years combing through primary sources such as court records and private letters to recreate for us a Harriet Tubman who lives and breathes. There's even a family tree.
Along the way, some treasured myths are debunked. For example, there was never a $40,000 bounty on her head. Nor (as every school child can quote) did she make 19 trips and rescue 300 people; it's closer to 13 trips and 70 people, and she perhaps provided aid and instructions to another 50. None of which diminishes her heroism, of course. It simply makes her more accessible as a human being by setting the record straight. And what Larson adds to the record far outweighs what she takes away.
This book can be challenging to read at times, because rather than stating her own conclusions as fact (e.g.Tubman's birth date, which she places in February or March of 1822) Larson sometimes presents several possibilities and provides evidence to support each; we are left to draw our own conclusions. But this provides groundwork for future researchers and, I feel, is a more honest than presuming finality where none is present.
The Publisher's Weekly review above mentions competition from Catherine Clinton's Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. While the narrative style of the Clinton book is probably more accessible to a casual reader, the book relies heavily on secondary sources, repeating some of the very myths debunked in Larson's book. But overall, it does take advantage of modern scholarship and is therefore an improvement upon previous adult biographies. If you want a quick and easy read, the Clinton book is a good choice.
If you want a book that is solidly and originally researched, then Larson is the only way to go.
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Title: Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton ISBN: 0316144924 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories (WISCONSIN STUDIES IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY) by Jean McMahon Humez ISBN: 0299191206 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad As Told by Levi Coffin and William Still by George Hendrick, Willene Hendrick ISBN: 1566635462 Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin ISBN: 0465092888 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 23 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek ISBN: 0374175268 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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