NIGHT FLYER

A keen investigation of Harriet Tubman through a womanist lens.

In this first installment of the publisher’s Significations series, National Book Award winner Miles chronicles and contextualizes Tubman’s work to lead enslaved people to freedom in the North, spotlighting her subject’s spiritual conviction and naturalistic know-how. The author mines existing biographies and places familiar Tubman anecdotes alongside the spiritual narratives of lesser-known Black women contemporaries. Miles seeks to rescue Tubman from the solitary, superhuman portrayals, laced with mysticism and oddity, that have defined her legacy and to show how she belonged to a larger tradition of Black women whose “fully felt, richly interpreted, environmentally informed faith tradition” led them to radical notions of freedom and resistance in the latter half of the 19th century. The author shades Tubman’s early life with rich details about the distinct shape of slavery and the labor market in Maryland. As she turns to Tubman’s more iconic moments as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Miles admits to the elusiveness of her subject. It’s no simple task to humanize such an iconic figure, with her multitude of accomplishments in the material realm, her steadfast presumption of God’s partnership in her works, and her own conscious construction of her narrative. The author’s painstaking work proves the necessity of her task to reconfigure the reductive historical canon surrounding Tubman, offering accessible inspiration to future actors and leaders of liberation and resistance in a world still marked by racist and sexist oppression. In a fitting conclusion, Miles writes, “I have tried to hold Harriet Tubman up—tenderly and honestly—in her genius, courage, vulnerability, faith, and flaws. And here at the end, I release her story back to the worldwide well of wise women, knowing she will not tolerate our scrutiny for long.”

A notable, discerning contribution to the understanding of an American legend.