Title:  Follow the Drinking Gourd

Author and Illustrator: Jeannette Winter

Publisher: Dragonfly Books, (Division. of Random House)

ISBN:  0-978-1-4420-1461-9

Audience: 5-9 years as an easy reader.  Also useful for an adult faith discussion on Liberation Theology.

Summary: This is a story about the Underground Railroad in the pre-civil war days of 1840 when Africans began to break the cruel bondage of slavery.   The narrative starts with an old sailor called Peg Leg Joe who helped the slaves escape their masters and find their way to freedom in Canada.  Under the guise of an itinerant handyman he would hire himself to plantation owners, then secretly meet with the slaves to teach them a song. “Follow the Drinking Gourd” contained coded instructions on how and when to escape, and directions for traveling to safe havens along the way. The drinking gourd referred to the constellation known as the Big Dipper which guided them northward along waterways and mountain passes.  The narrative then focuses on one slave family, Molly, James and Isaiah, about to be broken up through the sale of their father. One night they hear a quail call (one of the song’s codes), they look up to see the Big Dipper, and take off with an older woman, Hattie and her grandson George. Hiding by day and moving my night, pursued by the master’s dogs, they press on with little sleep or food, sometimes lost on starless nights, until they reached Peg Leg Joe at the Ohio River.  The travel from this point on was less perilous through a network of safe houses, one of which was a Quaker community, and finally on a boat across Lake Erie.

Literary Elements: Compassion, courage and faith are the themes of this longer-than-usual picture book (44 pages).  The suspense and drama of this moving tale come to life in pictures with deep vivid colors and emotional impact. The heroes of the story are the slave family, whose perilous journey is brought to life through dark colors and expressive faces, especially their eyes which are always vigilant. With a face that resembles Abraham Lincoln, Peg Leg Joe characterizes an empathetic soul whose own handicap perhaps allowed him to understand the lives and trials of the powerless. The dominant emotion is not fear but courage, solidarity and determination.   Hattie holds George in her arms as they huddle in a tree trunk, James and Isaiah fight off dogs and wolves, the whole party embrace at the crest of a hill under the starry night sky. The background gradually lightens as they approach the Canadian border and disembark from the boat under a bright blue sky and pink clouds. These pictures of faith and love in the quest for freedom are so full of detail they could be used without the text as a story-building exercise.

Perspective on gender/race/cuture/economics: There’s no question about the social and political message, but it’s not about race. This is a story of triumph over cruelty and oppression.  Age and gender roles are of no consequence among the fugitives and their supporters.  The slave masters are all male but that, unfortunately, was the reality of the time.

Theological Conversation Partners:

True To Our Native Land, by Brian Blount, Fortress Press ISBN 9780800634216

Theology: This story is loaded with Biblical themes and imagery.  Parallels with the Exodus narrative are obvious, but it also contains much material for a discussion of New Testament liberation theology in the light of African American experience, which is examined at length in Dr. Blount’s book True To Our Native Land.  Peg Leg Joe could as well represent Jesus as he could Moses. Jesus came to help enslaved humanity escape the evils of the domination system. His parables were coded messages to those who had ears to hear just as the song contained the secrets that led the slaves to freedom. Like Peg Leg Joe, he moved from place to place teaching in stories and healings that revealed the truth of God’s kingdom of freedom. “Each successful escape was as damaging to the system of institutionalized slavery as each one of Jesus’ successful exorcisms or healings had been to the continued dominance of the realm of the “strong man.” (Blount, p. 253) African American and Anglo American children and adults need to hear this story about people of the kingdom: the slaves, the sailor, and the Quakers whose faith and compassion brought them together on the road to freedom.

Follow the Drinking Gourd by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.