Chronicling a Desire for Family and Freedom

‘Twice Enslaved: Liberty and Justice for Henrietta Wood’By Selene CastrovillaIllustrations by Erin K. RobinsonCalkins Creek, 80 pages“Twice Enslaved: Liberty and Justice for Henrietta Wood” is recommended for ages 9-12, but what does that matter? This is a verse biography all the better for its tersely eloquent depiction of slavery in subdued tonal color variations that reflect the diminished perspective of a life separated from the freedom that Henrietta Wood could only imagine from the “wrong side” of the Ohio River in Kentucky.Born into slavery, as a teenager Ms. Wood was sold away from her family, then given her freedom, then lured back into a slave state and enslaved again and, then emancipated on Juneteenth (June 19, 1865.) In 1878, she successfully sued the man who had sold her back into slavery, and became one of the few slaves to receive a reparation payment ($2,500) in a jury judgment. The very first poem, “Growing Pains” presents the point of view of a young slave watching the “pulsing” of the Ohio River current from the Kentucky side that divides her from “Indiana’s freedom.” She watches a “ferry crossing / between the two states,” a ferry owned, ironically, by her slave master, who is just as watchful, “making sure / that there would be no ride across the river for her, / no ride to liberty.”So much of the early celebration of the American Revolution included poetry like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” that featured the lines, “Listen, my children, and you shall hear /Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,” with the “hurrying hoofbeats” that announce the exciting arrival of a fight for freedom.Illustrating “Growing Pains” is, instead, the figure of a young female slave, shown from the rear in high grass carrying a huge basket full of produce on her head, weighted in place as she gazes at a riverboat steaming along the aquamarine shimmering water away from her. Erin K. Robinson’s illustrations do more than tell Wood’s story; they also show a series of figures and landscapes that become emblematic of a sorry history, not just a biography.The words “wrong side” of the river become a refrain reflecting the wrong of slavery, the wrong that is done to Ms. Wood, and the wrong that makes slavery and freedom divisible as Henrietta is put into a pen with her family split apart and sold off one by one. Wood labors for a raging master who whips her; “no pleasing him, / no moving him.” Most of all she suffers from a loss of family that is “the most brutal lashing.” Like all slaves, she is subject to an economy that dictates she be sold again when her master loses his fortune. “Down to Hell” describes Wood’s descent into the deep South, on a “massive steamboat” on a “longer river,” the Mississippi, that delivers her to a plantation where there is no longer just a “wrong side,” but just a “sweltering heat” that is the hell of a “slavery so harsh, / so cruel, / it was near impossible / to ever leave.” In “Prayers,” Ms. Wood “Trapped in the humid heat” works hard “cooking, cleaning, ironing” to please her master’s family, giving way at night to unanswered prayers to a Lord that “was all/ she had.” That she “kept trying” through prayer foreshadows the determination that she exemplified in seeking restitution in her life after slavery. “Twice Enslaved” is divided into seven parts with an afterword and a section on Juneteenth that helps puts the whole story in historical perspective. “Twice Enslaved” does not minimize the terrors of slavery, the despair that made it seem irredeemable, and the struggle to seek a way out even when the very possibility of freedom remained almost unimaginable. Yet in her unremitting slave labor, Ms. Wood remains unconquerable in her desire for family and freedom. The illustration of a riverboat, gaily painted in pink and white, steaming along so near to that slave girl who cannot lay her burden down is haunting and tells such a different story from the generations who memorized the lines in “Paul Revere’s Ride” about his saddling up on the “opposite shore” bringing to the people a “cry of defiance and not of fear.”

Chronicling a Desire for Family and Freedom

More from the New York Sun

American, Japanese Forces Play Hyped-up ‘Iron Fist’ War Games Against Constant Threat of Communist Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

Trump Border Tsar Says Minnesota ICE Surge Will Wind Down in Coming Days

FTC Chairman Raises Concerns That Apple News Is Censoring Conservative News Outlets and Promoting Left-Wing Articles

More from the New York Sun

American, Japanese Forces Play Hyped-up ‘Iron Fist’ War Games Against Constant Threat of Communist Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

Trump Border Tsar Says Minnesota ICE Surge Will Wind Down in Coming Days

FTC Chairman Raises Concerns That Apple News Is Censoring Conservative News Outlets and Promoting Left-Wing Articles

‘Death to Herzog’ Graffiti Appears at Melbourne University Amid Protests Over Israeli President’s Visit

Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Former NFL Linebacker in Girlfriend’s Killing

Can Trump Hope for a Useful Agreement With Iran?

House Votes To Kill Trump’s Canada Tariffs, With Six Republicans Breaking With the President

Democrats Demand Investigation Into Bondi’s Apparent Monitoring of Lawmakers Who Review Unredacted Epstein Files