Today, my Special Topics in Writing class begins reading Beverly Lowry's Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life. I read this book about five years ago and greatly enjoyed it. This time, I hope to read a bit more closely. I'd like to think about how Lowry goes about telling this story. This will be a study and a model for me and for my students.
So, I began reading last night, and I paid attention to how Lowry opens the book. She sets a tone maybe with Owasco Lake. Perhaps that is her intention. She provides a bit of the landscape (literal and figurative) of Tubman's old age. Lakes are usually thought of as calm. Lowry suggests that old age has set in with Tubman so there is an involuntary calmness about her maybe. She says that calmness has characterized Tubman throughout her life. She has been "indifferent to all surrounding circumstances." However, moments later, Lowry writes that "the constant cut of fear" has taken its toll. This contradiction early on in the book, in the drawing of Tubman's character, Lowry seems unaware of. Is Tubman unshakable, fearless, or fearful and deeply bothered? Perhaps she is both, which it seems to me would make her completely normal. But again, I'm not sure Lowry is herself aware of the contradiction. Still, I think the lake could be a useful metaphor for all of the complexity that lies just beneath the surface, and I am sure that Lowry uses it to frame Tubman's life for just this purpose. Hopefully, thinking about this tool will encourage my students to visit the landscapes of their subjects. (They too are writing about specific individuals as they study and write about slavery.)
Another feature I'm paying attention to is Lowry's narrative voice, which seems interesting. She is telling Tubman's story; she is narrator, but she is using material from an earlier biographer--Sarah Hopkins Bradford--who wrote of Tubman's life in 1901. So, she is actually in the first chapter telling of Tubman meeting with Hopkins Bradford and her brother at Lake Owosco. Lowry imagines Tubman's trip there, involving both the Lehigh train and a boat ride. Lowry is in a sense telling two overlapping stories--one of Tubman and one of Tubman's biographer's process. Lowry seems also be evaluating if not judging Hopkins Bradford's intentions and therefore her work. She suggests that the early biographer is snobbish and also not above the casual "racial stereotyping of her time." In this, I see Lowry justifying the need for her own biography.
Harriet has come to lunch at the Hopkins summer house to tell new stories, for example, one that she has remembered on the boat ride over. There will be a new edition of the biography. Her lake is deep, and it takes time for memories to come to the surface.
So far Imagining a life has been a little difficult to follow although i have discovered some interesting things about Harriet Tubman and I have found the writing style of the author to be very interesting even though the style of it may primarily be the reason why i am having trouble following it in its entirety. However i have only gotten through the first chapter so i have plenty of time to come to a understanding of what the story is about. Optimistically i'm hoping that this book becomes a lot more fun to read.
ReplyDelete"Imagining a Life" provides a close detailed factual story on Harriet Tubman's life in slavery and during the Civil War. Author Beverly Lowry, speculates early accounts of Tubman's life. For example, Lowry use of description when detaling Tubman's escape that she did not escape alone but with aid from the North Star. I'm puzzled when reading certain sections of the story because I'm trying to register which is factual and which is not. Lowry acknowledges that she is trying to tell a "better story" of Tubman's life experiences. I'm still reading the story so that I can give a better insight of how life really was for Tubman. I'm enjoying the book, it's a great read and very creative.
ReplyDeleteSo, we should discuss the relationship between facts and what Lowry does with the facts. I like the word that Phyllis uses--"speculates." Lowry does speculate. Let's see if we can find and discuss an example of this in class.
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at " Imagining a Life" i automatically just go into the mindset of how im going to shape my actual story. I feel that it is descriptive, but the actual speculation part i can see how that plays a very domonate roll because no one can actually tell a story on a story if you weren't actually apart of or present at the particular time. Some words or metaphors create great emphasis on details that kind of tells me how to shape my product into a master piece.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy this writing experience.
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