Author | Marcy Heidish |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Historical fiction |
Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | 1976 |
Media type | |
Pages | 308 |
ISBN | 978-0-395-21535-7 |
A Woman Called Moses is the 1976 debut novel of American author Marcy Heidish. It is a fictionalized presentation of the early life of black American abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The novel received positive reviews, but was criticized by some academics as historically inaccurate. In 1978 it was adapted as a two-part miniseries, also titled A Woman Called Moses .
Two years after the American Civil War, Harriet Tubman recalls her life in slavery in the pre-war Southern United States, her escape from bondage, and her subsequent efforts to free other enslaved people.
The novel received positive responses from reviewers. A review in The Boston Globe called it "vivid and dramatic". [1] The reviewer for The Tennessean said it was "full of compelling storytelling". [2] Other reviews called it "evocative", [3] "enjoyable and enlightening reading", [4] and "a novel of superior quality". [5]
Some historians were more critical of the book, saying its portrayal of Tubman was not accurate. James A. McGowan, the editor of the Harriet Tubman Journal, called the novel a "deliberate distortion". McGowan and others were especially critical of Heidish's portrayal of the very religious Tubman drinking, swearing, and engaging in pre-marital sex. [6]
In 1978 the novel was adapted into a two-part television miniseries, also titled A Woman Called Moses . The adaptation aired on NBC on December 11 and 12. Cicely Tyson starred as Tubman. [7]
"Go Down Moses" is an African American spiritual that describes the Hebrew exodus, specifically drawing from Exodus 5:1: "And the LORD spoke unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me", where God commands Moses to demand the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. As is common in spirituals, the song discusses freedom, referring both to the freedom of the Israelites, and that of runaway enslaved people. As a result of these messages, this song was outlawed by many enslavers.
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
Hud is a 1963 American Western film starring Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon deWilde, and Patricia Neal. Directed by Martin Ritt, it was produced by Ritt and Newman's recently founded company, Salem Productions, and was their first film for Paramount Pictures. Hud was filmed on location on the Texas Panhandle, including Claude, Texas. Its screenplay was by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. and was based on Larry McMurtry's 1961 novel, Horseman, Pass By. The film's title character, Hud Bannon, was a minor character in the original screenplay, but was reworked as the lead role. With its main character an antihero, Hud was later described as a revisionist Western.
Frank Herbert's Dune is a three-part science fiction television miniseries based on the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. It was written and directed by John Harrison. The cast includes Alec Newman as Paul Atreides, William Hurt as Duke Leto Atreides, and Saskia Reeves as Lady Jessica, as well as Ian McNeice as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and Giancarlo Giannini as the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
The Raid on Combahee Ferry was a military operation during the American Civil War conducted on June 1 and June 2, 1863, by elements of the Union Army along the Combahee River in Beaufort and Colleton counties in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Earl Conrad, birth name Cohen, was an American author who penned at least twenty works of biography, history, and criticism, including books in collaboration. At least one that he 'ghost' wrote was the autobiography of actor Errol Flynn, titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Midnight Robber is a science fiction bildungsroman by Jamaican-Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson. Warner Aspect published the novel in 2000.
A Woman Called Moses is a 1978 American television miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Marcy Heidish, about the life of Harriet Tubman, the escaped African American slave who led dozens of other African Americans from enslavement in the Southern United States to freedom in the Northern states and Canada.
Milton Moses Ginsberg was an American film director and editor. He was noted for writing and directing Coming Apart, a 1969 film starring Rip Torn and Sally Kirkland, and The Werewolf of Washington starring Dean Stockwell.
Milton C. Sernett is an American historian, author, and professor at Syracuse University. He has published many books, articles and book chapters on African American history. His published works in African-American history focus on abolitionism, religion, biographies and the Underground Railroad. He has spent several years studying the anti-slavery movements in Upstate New York, particularly, the life of Harriet Tubman.
Cynthia Erivo is an English actress and singer. She gained recognition for starring in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple from 2015 to 2017, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Erivo ventured into films in 2018, playing roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. For her portrayal of American abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet (2019), Erivo received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress; she also wrote and performed the song "Stand Up" on its soundtrack, which garnered her a nomination in the Best Original Song category.
The Woman's Era was the first national newspaper published by and for black women in the United States. Originally established as a monthly Boston newspaper, it became distributed nationally in 1894 and ran until January 1897, with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin as editor and publisher. The Woman's Era played an important role in the national African-American women's club movement.
A statue of Harriet Tubman created by artist Jane DeDecker honors the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The bronze statue depicts Tubman walking and holding the hand of a young boy.
Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities is an anthology of biographies of African-American women edited by Monroe Alpheus Majors published in 1893 in Chicago. Majors sketched the lives of nearly 300 women, including Edmonia Lewis, Amanda Smith, Ida B. Wells, and Sojourner Truth. Majors began to compile the book in Waco, Texas, in 1890. He hoped to show the worth of black women for themselves and as an expression of the value of all African Americans. A significant omission from the book was Harriet Tubman. The book sought to shape contemporary attitudes and historian Milton C. Sernett hypothesizes that including Tubman would invoke memories of the pain of slavery.
Fern Cunningham was an American sculptor. One of her best known works is the Harriet Tubman Memorial, which was the first statue honoring a woman on city-owned land in Boston.
Harriet, the Woman Called Moses is an opera in two acts composed by Thea Musgrave who also wrote the libretto which is loosely based on episodes in the life of the American abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman. The opera premiered on 1 March 1985 in Norfolk, Virginia, performed by Virginia Opera with subsequent broadcasts of the Virginia Opera production on National Public Radio and BBC Radio 3. Musgrave also wrote two shortened versions of the opera—The Story of Harriet Tubman and the concert work Remembering Harriet.
Harriet is a 2019 American biographical film directed by Kasi Lemmons, who also wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard. It stars Cynthia Erivo as abolitionist Harriet Tubman, with Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, and Janelle Monáe in supporting roles. A biography about Harriet Tubman had been in the works for years, with several actresses, including Viola Davis, rumored to star. Erivo was cast in February 2017, and much of the cast and crew joined the following year. Filming took place in Virginia from October to December 2018.
Nkeiru Okoye is an American composer and musician. She has composed many works based on American history, including Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom, Invitation to a Die-In and "The Journey of Phillis Wheatley".
Harriet Tubman (1822–1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.