According to some of what I read and hear these days, I definitely should not have written this story, about a young slave girl and the Quaker saint John Woolman.

Why not? Mostly because of what I wasn’t: I wasn’t a girl (& never had been); wasn’t a slave (or even an enslaver, for that matter); wasn’t Black, and (late entry) had no plans to have the tale vetted by an ethnic/cultural sensitivity reader.

But also because of what I was: white, male, urban, not young, more or less middle class

I still am that last batch, except considerably more not young.

Also, I am not some other things that could today be tagged as “problematic”: the story is set on a subsistence farm, and I’ve never been a farmer. It was set in Virginia, where I’d never lived (I got there later, but the damage was done); the action takes place 220 years earlier, and my familiarity with the relevant history was barely at the smattered level. And John Woolman had been both a storekeeper and a tailor, of both of which trades I was ignorant.

Add up this scorecard, and some would say today I’m not eligible to write a story about this, with three of five main characters of color.

Nevertheless, I did write it, and have published it elsewhere, and now it’s going online, at the link below.

What’s my excuse? There are three, all I think legitimate Here are the two that mean the most: first, wonder; second (& equal), imagination. (I’ll get to the third shortly).

Wonder: I had read John Woolman’s famous Journal (it’s online here, free, and if thee claims to be a  Quaker, or even Quaker curious, Friend, thee should read it too. Here’s a historian’s sketch of Woolman.). Like so many, I admired the book, and the author’s witness of pleading with slaveowners to unchain their captives.

But I also wondered: we Quakers celebrate the reports of Woolman succeeding in touching an enslaver’s heart. But . . . in baseball, even the top sluggers strike out more than they hit homers. Woolman pursued his quiet crusade until his death in 1772, and his yearly meeting didn’t ban slaveholding til some years after. So in his day, Woolman’s enslaver Friends very likely said No to his appeals much more than they said Yes.

And what about the enslaved?  I don’t recall their reactions being recorded.

Here’s where imagination comes in, and melds with wondering: What if Woolman’s leading was called into question, not by a broadbrimmed clearness committee, but by one or more of those still left behind when his speaking truth to power failed to loose their fetters, as it often must have? The idea for the story soon took shape.   

This line of thought was turned into the attached fictional narrative in 1977, more than forty years ago. And while they didn’t feel that way then, those were simpler times.

Now, in many editorial offices, the evaluation process includes mysterious but searching reviews for whether such a story might inflict some kind of “harm” on many actual or hypothetical readers, past, present or future, or exclude other authors, deemed marginalized or under-represented. If such putative harms are detected or simply proclaimed, public apologies may be demanded, the more self-abasing and groveling the better.

I acknowledge being a survivor of a different era, in which forthright review and critiques more often resembled a dialogue or debate. The comment section of this blog is open as a still-living specimen of this tradition. This story has circulated for four-plus decades, and to my knowledge, no other story of similar bent has appeared; no other writer has thereby been marginalized.

With that lack of report comes my final rationale for doing it, leading: the story felt “right.” when written, and still does. Besides, plenty of fiction (good and bad) stirs the waters, and challenges conventional notions. Fortunately, as a retiree, I have no job to lose, and no tenure to be revoked. If shown actual errors, I’m prepared to address them, if plainly stated. Otherwise, read, comment as moved, and, I hope readers find some stimulus to their own imagination, wonder, and leadings.

Click the link below to open the story in PDF

John Woolman and the Slave Girl (PDF)

And a special thanks to Diane Faison, who carries The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, for particular encouragement.