Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

Author: Ilyon Woo

If there is one book that you read this year, let it be this one. I have read many books and seen a few movies on the antebellum South, but this one is sweeping and very well laid out. At it’s spine the book tells the story of the enslaved couple Ellen and William Craft that made a historical escape from their owners in Macon Georgia. 

Woo transports you back in time starting in Macon Georgia 1848 and works her way up the eastern seaboard to Philadelphia and then Boston. She meticulously combs through historical literature to find contemporaneous events that she peppers into the narrative so you get a sense of what was happening around Ellen and William Craft during that period. Rather than make up what they said to each other, she finds quotes from their books, so she can reproduce their dialog as faithfully as humanly possible. 

While the story of their escape is ingenious and pulse pounding, Woo has a much bigger story to tell. She describes the broader abolitionist movement and some of the key characters like

• William Wells Brown who also had escaped from slavery at the young age of 19. He was giving lectures and raising money to free slaves and quickly brought in Ellen and William along with him.
• WIlliam Lloyd Garrison was a prominent abolitionist at the time who had founded the anti-slavery newspaper called “The Liberator”.
• Theodore Parker was a Unitarian minister who remarried William and Ellen in a Christian ceremony before they departed for England in 1850, due to the dangers of the “Fugitive Slave Act”
• Lady Byron and Harriet Martinueau who supported the Crafts during their time in England in the 1850s. It is at Lady Byron’s Ockham School in Surrey that the crafts finally stopped touring and took the time to further their education.

Soon after arriving in Boston in late 1848, William and Ellen Craft were encouraged by prominent abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and William Wells Brown to recount their daring escape from slavery in public lectures to abolitionist circles all across New England. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, they were at high risk of being captured and sent back to their owners in the South. Finally in December of 1950, they fled to England which turned out to be another challenge.

All of this story is so beautifully told that the book is a joy to read. You get a great perspective on what was definitely the top issue that rocked the nation in the mid nineteenth century.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Author: James McBride

This book came highly recommended by my wife. When I asked her what it was about, she responded with “Just read it. You will like it”.  If there’s one thing I have learned after being married for 30+ years is that she knows exactly what I like and do not like. Needless to say she was right as always.

James McBride describes life in the rundown Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, PA where Jewish immigrants and Black families coexist in uneasy but independent harmony. At the center is the love story between Moshe and Chona, the owners of an unprofitable Heaven and Earth grocery store that mostly serves the neighboring black community. Moshe Ludlow is a Romanian Jewish immigrant who has found success in running the All-American Dance Hall. Chona is an American-born Jew who’s father built the only synagogue in Pottstown. She suffers from some disability and hence not a suitable candidate for marriage. However, Moshe is attracted to her and asks for her hand in marriage. The rest of the book vividly describes their life thereafter and some of the interplay between all the motley residents of Pottstown. 

The book has some memorable lines that made me stop and think.  In describing the interaction between an Eastern European Jewish immigrant and his black neighbor who built the synagogue McBride writes,  “What a man does to live often has nothing to do with how he lives”.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Nickel Boys

Author: Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is one of only four writers to have won the Pulitzer prize twice. His first win was in 2017 for “The Underground Railroad” and the second one in 2020 for “The Nickel Boys”.  The book vividly describes the gruesome and barbaric conditions in a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. While it is a work of fiction, it is based on the recent discoveries of the horrors that transpired at the “Dozier School for Boys” in Florida. The shocking realization for me was that this school was operating all the way until 2011 when it was finally closed!

Nickel Boys tells the story of young Elwood Curtis who is a promising black teenager, unlucky to find himself on the wrong side of the law. Without any due process, he is shunted to the Nickel Boys reform school where his life gets turned upside down. I won’t go into the gruesome details here, but Whitehead spares no words in describing the abuse and dehumanization perpetrated against Black youths at the Nickel reform school. Whitehead's spare, elegant prose renders the abuse with gut-wrenching clarity - from the capricious beatings in the notorious "White House" to the haunting depictions of boys disappearing into punishing confinement never to be seen again. 

All through the book I found myself cheering for Elwood, clinging to the hope that he will find a way out. Colson Whitehead has some tricks up his sleeve that I won’t describe her so as not to spoil the final chapters in the book. 

Pick up this book and you will not put it down until you finish it.