Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero–the woman who, despite being barely five feet tall, illiterate, and suffering from a brain injury, managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some 750 people. You could almost say she’s America’s Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood.
Tiya Miles’s extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman’s life into the fabric of her world.
She probes the ecological reality of Tubman’s surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes the more palpable the more we understand it–a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.
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PRAISE
“Miles is one of our greatest living historians and a beautiful writer to boot . . . As in all her work, Miles fleshes out the complexity, humanity, and social and emotional world of her subject.” —The Millions, Most Anticipated
“Miles goes beyond standard biographies by foregrounding two aspects of Tubman’s life that have rarely been analyzed together: her religious faith and her deep understanding of ecology . . . Miles’ thoughtful engagement with Tubman’s contemporaries allows her to place the icon within a proud lineage of Black female mystics and preachers. . . . A truly unique analysis.” —Booklist
“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. . . . A notable, discerning contribution to the understanding of an American legend.” —Kirkus
“Drawing on and extending accounts of Harriet Tubman’s life and memories, Tiya Miles’s Night Flyer situates Tubman as a thinker, dreamer, and doer. An intellectual, physical, and spiritual force embedded in multiple worlds—ecological, geographical, familial, dream, and spiritual—acquiring and acting on knowledge drawn from each of them. Beautifully conceived and written, Night Flyer speaks powerfully of the worlds Tubman navigated and refused, and to our own perilous times.” —Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes
“Night Flyer anchors Harriet Tubman to the faith and ferocity that has made her beloved by generations of Americans. Tiya Miles continues to captivate readers with her luminous prose, her riveting attention to detail, and her continuing genius to bring the past to life. With imaginative engagement, she has offered us a window onto the world inhabited by Tubman and her people, and its crucial legacy for us today.” —Catherine Clinton, author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
“Transcending the boundaries of literary genre and academic discipline, Miles provides a brilliant meditation on the many worlds of Harriet Tubman—environmental, social, interior. Night Flyer is also a lyrical praise song to Tubman and those Black women preachers who melded religious faith with physical courage to fight for the liberation of Black bodies, minds, and spirits. A stunning achievement.” —Jacqueline Jones, author of No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era