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Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. By Catherine Clinton. (New York and Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004. Pp. xiv, 272. $27.95, ISBN 0-316-14492-4.)
Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories. By Jean M. Humez. Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, c. 2003. Pp. xii, 471. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-299-19120-6; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-299-19124-9.)
Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. By Kate Clifford Larson. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004. Pp. xxviii, 402. Paper, $14.95, ISBN 0-345-45628-9; cloth, $26.95, ISBN 0-345-45627-0.)
Between 1863 and 1943 fewer than ten serious biographies of Harriet Tubman appeared. There is no correlation between this meager body of scholarship and the immeasurable reputation of the woman known as "General Tubman" to the abolitionist John Brown and as "Moses" to the fugitives from slavery whom she liberated. Much of the data about the legendary Harriet Tubman comes from and has been perpetuated by scores of fictional and nonfictional works written for young readers. Given this bias against adult and academic readers, the nearly simultaneous publication of three scholarly studies about the well-known Underground Railroad conductor are welcomed additions to the literature.
Against such a backdrop, it is appropriate to ask what precipitated the current explosion in scholarship. Catherine Clinton maintains that increased interest in the enslaved population has intersected with the proliferation of scholarship about women. Hence, her biography of Harriet Tubman, a slaveborn woman. Jean M. Humez notes that Tubman's narrative was "fragmented and obscured by the mediated forms in which it was recorded" (p. 6). As a result, her life story has not been a part of contemporary discussions about nineteenth-century narratives written by black women. Humel's efforts to recover Tubman's own history make it possible for the emergence of her "autobiography" and for her to receive a place, perhaps, in the pantheon of nineteenth-century black women writers. Finally, Kate Clifford Larson argues that Tubman's actual life story is more compelling than the partially fictionalized versions so readily available to young readers. In short, Larson aims to ferret out myths from reality and "reconstruct a richer and far more accurate historical account" than found in previous biographies (p. xvi).
Motivations and intents aside, the scholars take on the challenging task...