Enjoy a talk by Ilyon Woo about her Pulitzer prize winner, Master, Slave, Husband, Wife named one of best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, and Oprah Daily.
About the book
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles crisscrossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.
But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.
With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.
Select Reviews
“A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.” —The Pulitzer Prizes
“MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE tells one of the most important stories of American Slavery and Freedom. With prose that is suspenseful, brilliantly detailed, historically precise, and simply gorgeous, Woo depicts the Crafts and their historic role in antebellum America stunningly. This is a story that will stay with you for a lifetime.” —Imani Perry Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for South to America: A Journey below the Mason-Dixon to understand the soul of a nation
“Master Slave Husband Wife is a suspenseful, sensitively rendered account of [Ellen and William Craft’s] four-day journey to the North. . . Woo tells the story [with] a cinematic eye. She excels at setting scenes, conjuring the sensations experienced by the Crafts at each harrowing point. . . The vivid details help Woo to convey the Crafts’ attention to every element of their plot.” — W. Caleb McDaniel — The New York Times Book Review
“A gripping adventure. . . suspenseful and wonderfully told. A captivating tale that ably captures the determination and courage of a remarkable couple.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the author
Ilyon Woo is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023,” also named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily.
Time Magazine called Master Slave Husband Wife an “edge-of-your-seat drama”; The Wall Street Journal pronounced it: “A narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true…. a “genuine nail-biter.” A finalist for a Kirkus Prize, the book was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal, nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, and supported by a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant.
Ilyon is also the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions.
Ilyon has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on such programs as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University, where she first came upon the story of William and Ellen Craft.