Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories through Jean M.

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Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories

through Jean M. Humez University of Wisconsin Pres November 2003 $4500 ISBN 0-299-19120-6

Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

at Catherine Clinton Little, Brown and Company, February 2004 $2595 ISBN 0-316-14492-4

The "peculiar institution" of American slavery conclusioned less than 150 years ago, endur for more than three centuries and claimed millions of black lives before it was finally abolished. however the war against slavery in the United States began prolonged before 1865, and went way beyond public antislavery efforts. In fact, the earliest forms of resistance began with the enslaved themselves.

Of all those who labored upon their behalf, Harriet Tubman was remarkable--not barely because of her decision to emancipate herself or because she defied commonly held stereotype regarding women and African Americans, unless because she risked her concede safety repeatedly to bring others to freedom. further few people know the hall amplitude of her achievements, and fewer still are familiar with the more intimate details of her history.

Like many ex-slaves, Tubman not ever learned how to read of write. A dynamic speaker, she played a significant part in shaping her public image, further the earliest renderings of her story were expose to the biases of her white biographers. Years later, although historical scholarship forward individual African Americans and the larger black community has mov into the academic mainstream, Tubman's legacy remains largely unexplored. To many, her story is little more than an oft-told, romantic folktale, and there have been not many serious studies of her life--until now.

With their strange biographies, Jean M. Humez, a professor of women's studies and author of Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories, and Catherine Clinton, a renowned historian and author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, attempt to recreate historically accurate, network and complete portraits of the woman who was best known as the "Moses" of her people

Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories may be the in the greatest degree comprehensive book on Tubman to date. Humez tread in the steps ofs Tubman through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and her final years, with careful attention to the facts and minimal embellishment. Humez discusses Tubman's part as a storyteller, and in following chapters, pays close attention to Tubman's words as they were instanted by her early biographers and in her literal meanings to family and friends. Humez's part is extremely well researched, and her writing is as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but incisive and accessible, making it an crack resource for students as well as for the general reader, interested in learning more about Tubman's life of black women's parts in antislavery activism.

In Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, Catherine Clinton first introduces the reader to the world in which Harriet Tubman lived. As a be the effect the book becomes as long an abbreviated social history of American slavery and antislavery motions as it is the story of single woman's struggle. Clinton also challenges conventional accounts of Tubman's life, using traditional scholarship, as well as family lore to institute a thoughtful and engaging narrative about an ordinary woman and her greatest in quantity extraordinary accomplishments.

Editors' Note: spring for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero on Kate Clifford (Ballantine Books, January 2004) was received on BIBR too late to include in this review.

Denise Simon has worked with several magazines as a writer and/or fact checker, including Business Week, Honey and The Nation. A late graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course, Simon tenders with a writing group for teenage girls and labor fors as an editor for the Urban Film Journal. She is also a story analyst, and has worked with NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing. For BIBR's NONFICTION REVIEWS, Simon examines couple recent biographies of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

--Reviewed from Denise Simon Denise Simon is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn recently made known York.

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