 She was a biographer before she wrote this and perhaps that's why Harriet Tubman's family went to her and asked her to write this book and She she uses her literary license to set up scenes before she moves into Harriet Tubman's voice Which she denotes with quotation marks. So I think that it would be very clear to students Where Bradford begins and where Tubman begins? however Again, we have to rely on on Bradford for the faithful rendition of Tubman's words Those quotation marks are a good signal to us. This is what Tubman said But we have to trust that Bradford wrote that down accurately and we also have to kind of work our way through Bradford's attempt to render what she viewed as an African-American dialect So that creates a problem. I think in terms of even within the quota material What did Bradford think she heard what did Bradford write down and what did Tubman actually say? Beside that sticking point. I think that it is very clear where Bradford Comes in and where her voice is in this text now Bradford is writing this first this first edition in 1868 this is a really raw moment in American history the Civil War has just concluded and relations between blacks and whites north and south are by no means clear to anyone and Bradford is writing out of an understanding of black and white relations that Places black people on a lower level of a civilization of intelligence of attainment and This comes out in the way that she writes about Harriet Tubman she talks about Harriet Tubman's story as a little story and She writes that she knows that some of the readers of this book will find it Unbelievable that a black woman could be considered a heroine so Bradford's position as as the writer of this book Is one that we need to question as we as we read the text Even though there are clear demarcations between her voice and the put a material from Tubman Another way that Bradford's account of Harriet Tubman's life can be very useful in the classroom is As a window into the Underground Railroad and how it functioned Harriet Tubman after she freed herself Got involved with this network of people an informal network of people who were committed to helping black slaves escape these were white people black people women men who sort of banded together in this common mission and Bradford's account gives us a little window into the different techniques that they would have used Which is quite valuable because of course everything they did was supposed to have been secret to protect the escaped slaves From their former owners and from slave catchers another way in which this text can really be interesting I think I'm thinking about Harriet Tubman's history and black woman's history is that it shows Harriet Tubman as an intellectual it places her within a rubric of black women's intellectual history the history of black women's thinking as it has changed over time I don't think Tubman is often thought about as an intellectual, but she was as I said earlier a brilliant woman She had to be to accomplish all that she did over the many years that she went back to the south to help so many slaves escape and We get an inkling of her thoughts and Bradford's account We wish for more of course and we wish Harry Tubman had written her own account But we do get a bit in Bradford's account One example of that is that when Tubman is living in Philadelphia where she works to try to earn money to to fund her rescue missions a Group of people invite her to come see a stage production of Uncle Tom's cabin and she says that she will not go that she has no need to go Because Uncle Tom's cabin can in no way capture the reality of the experience of slavery which she herself already knows So this is a form of Cultural criticism when she is saying that as popular as this novel was even though it was taking the country by storm that as a Former slave that she had a more accurate version of slavery than Harry Beatrice. No