Book Review: Beyond Emancipation: Maroon Freedoms in US Literature, 1850-1862

Beyond Emancipation: Maroon Freedoms in US Literature, 1850-1862. By Sean Gerrity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2025. Hardcover, 198 pp. $110.00.

Reviewed by Al Mackey

Maroons were freedom-seekers who had escaped bondage and were hiding out, usually in swamps such as the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. In many cases they formed communities and kept close watch to maintain their new-found freedom. As the maroons, in some cases armed, knew the terrain and there were a number of dangerous animals in the swamps, enslavers were usually not well disposed to search after them in those swamps.

In this book, Professor Sean Gerrity looks at how some major works of literature have treated maroons within their plots. One example is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s other novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. In that novel, Stowe goes into great detail about a maroon community living in the Great Dismal Swamp. Even though it is a fictional account, Stowe obviously did  considerable research on the topic because much of what she had to say about those communities was accurate.

In Blake; or, The Huts of America, Martin Delany gives us Henry Blake, whom Professor Gerrity describes as, “a radical Black revolutionary who seeks the destruction of slavery and slaveholders and, in keeping with parts of Delany’s own political thought, plans the creation of a Black republic where the outlawing of slavery is the first decree.” (61) On the same page, Professor Gerrity says Delany wrote the novel as a response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, because he did not like the passivity of Uncle Tom.

Professor Gerrity includes nonfiction as well as fiction. He brings up Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. While Northup did not then escape his bondage, there was some mention of marronage in the book when he relates the story of Lew Cheney, an enslaved person who put together an escape plot by moving from plantation to plantation at night, and ended up betraying the men and women he rallied to escape to Mexico.

Another nonfiction account is that of Harriet Jacobs, aka Linda Brent, who hid out in the garret of her grandmother’s shed for years to escape the sexual attentions of her enslaver. She was a maroon who hid locally, but not in the swamps.

The general theme of the book is that the tradition of discussing marronage crosses racial lines of authors. Both Black and White authors included it in accounts in similar ways. In my opinion, he sustains this thesis quite well.

While Professor Gerrity does not break any new historical ground, since this is not a history book per se, but rather a work of literary criticism, he did do much historical research in putting this book together. He provides historical context for the stories of marronage, both fictional and nonfictional. He includes the most recent scholarship in the context he provides, focusing on marronage and the context of the literature he discusses.

The target audience for this book appears to be academics in English departments. It is not geared to the lay reader, though if you have an interest in marronage you may find it a good guide to its use in literature. However, if you have no interest in marronage, this might not be the book you want to read if you are looking for historical accounts. If, however, marronage is an interest of yours, or if you are interested in literature about marronage or African Americans, then you may find this book useful.

Al Mackey is a retired US Air Force colonel currently contributing to his community by serving as a substitute teacher in Pennsylvania. A lifelong student of the American Civil War since taking an undergraduate course with Professor James I. “Bud” Robertson at Virginia Tech, Al blogs at Student of the American Civil War, where he posts reviews, videos, interviews, interesting articles he finds, and research results.