James McBride’s ‘The Good Lord Bird’ renders comical, human portraits of famous fighters against slavery

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McBride is equally quick criticize the rhetoric of the countless slave narratives that grew out of the abolitionist movement – used as moral suasion in the argument against slavery at a time when, as Onion aptly puts it “everyone got to make a speech about the Negro, but the Negro.”

For instance, in one (of many) scenes in which Onion plays on various social stereotypes to save his skin (pun intended), he refers to himself pityingly as, “not knowing where [he] belongs, being a tragic mulatto and all.” McBride uses his characters’ awareness of these tropes and their strategic application to give him a form of agency within the system.

In another scene, Brown says to Onion’s father before he dies, “you and your tragic octoroon daughter here… is now free.” Again, the tragic mulatto trope is employed, this time reminding us that, however important the slave’s freedom was to many white abolitionists, it was perhaps equally important, in this backfeeding power dynamic, to abolitionists that freedom was theirs to grant.

Reimagining Frederick Douglass

Although Brown is the primary subject of McBride’s instrumentation, the results are most striking in his reimagining of Frederick Douglass as an egotistical narcissist who had two wives and, “walked about the house like a king in pantaloons and suspenders, practicing his orations.”

Eventually this lion of a man goes on to get soused on whiskey one afternoon, making a pass at our precocious protagonist as McBride takes another jab at the rhetoric of abolitionism. In a slick speech that sexualizes the concept of freedom, Douglass presses upon Onion that “she” is, as a colored woman, “natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner [and] knows no freedom … while the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.”

He goes on to say that they (slave owners) know nothing of the “pounding of [her] silent and lustful heart.” Applying his powers of speech, ole Freddy then leans in for a kiss and cops a feel.

Moral suasion indeed!

Deconstructing gender in the Old South

In The Good Lord Bird McBride also explores what it means to be a “man” via Onion’s female disguise. Throughout his journey Onion vacillates between being fed up with the” game of being a girl,” which for him means the performance of gender, i.e., not being asked to carry heavy loads, being granted asylum for any number of offenses by crying, etc. Onion exploits these constructs when it’s to his advantage, much the same way his puts on and puts off his racial identity.

Ultimately being a man comes to mean being a person of action and living (and owning) up to your deeds. This is a lesson most bitterly imparted when after a failed slave revolt, the organizer – an impassioned slave woman who proudly confesses her role in the failed plan – urges one of her co-conspirators, who breaks down on his way to being hanged, to “be a man” — to die, as she does, with honor.

This point is echoed when Brown says to Onion before his own execution, “whatever you is…be it full,” advising him to live with integrity, whatever his true gender identity may be.

Heroes recast as human

Stylistically. McBride’s novel is chock-full of punchy, inflected dialogue, but its repetitive storytelling often drags. At times it’s as if our narrator were recounting the tale after one too many whiskeys. However, this too could be an homage to the rich tradition of repetitious slave narratives. If you have read any of Frederick Douglass’ three (three!) autobiographies, you know very well what I’m talking about.

What The Good Lord Bird does best is speculate that these giants of history were human and most certainly flawed. To forget the human element of these historic events and people, is to rob them of their power of identification and our ability to access them.

McBride also reminds us that when it comes to telling any story (and history is a story), illustrating the division between hero and villain, victim and champion, and oppressor and oppressed has a lot has to do with who is doing the telling, and is rarely a matter of black and white.

Chase Quinn is a freelance writer, art critic, and budding novelist, who has worked with several leading human rights organizations in the U.S. and the U.K., promoting social and economic justice. Follow Chase on Twitter at @chasebquinn.