A Girl Called Boy by Belinda Hurmence

First published: 1982

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Race and ethnicity

Time of work: 1853, contemporary flashback

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: North Carolina mountain area

Principal Characters:

• Boy, (
• Blanche Overtha Yancey, ), a contemporary eleven-year-old girl, who has no interest in her slave ancestors until she becomes a runaway slave
• Isaac, a slave boy about Boy’s age, who is escaping with his father in an attempt to find his mother and then go North
• Ike, Isaac’s father, who is wise in the ways of the slave catchers and plantation owners and knows how to avoid them
• Mammy, the slave who watches over the house
• Mrs. Yancey, the plantation owner’s wife, who believes Boy is her runaway slave
• Lookup, a storytelling slave, who befriends Boy

The Story

A Girl Called Boy draws upon oral histories and plantation records to provide for the reader a vivid view of life in the slave quarters in the 1850’s as seen through the eyes of a contemporary black girl. Blanche Overtha Yancey (Boy) dislikes her traditional family name because it represents to her a time when her family members were slaves. She believes all slaves were ignorant and that no one could make her be a slave. Her parents try to convince her not to be ashamed of her ancestors, but she ridicules them and the African conjure bird that her father carries in his pocket.

On a family picnic in the mountains, she waves the conjure bird and orders it to “Take me over the water,” and mysteriously the valley around her seems to become different. Boy is lost and can find no familiar landmarks to help her return to her family, but she does find a small cabin. She is pulled into the cabin by Ike, a runaway slave, who with Isaac, his young son, presumes she, too, is a runaway and lets her come with them as they search for Isaac’s mother, who has been sold. Because of her cropped hair and blue jeans, they think she is a boy, and she does not tell them otherwise.

During the Christmas holidays, they arrive at a plantation where they are hidden by the slaves, and Boy is kept in the “chillen’s” house, where she learns much about the daily lives of slaves. Boy gradually realizes that they are not ignorant but simply are caught in their way of life. Many of them think of their owners as good people, but they all fear being sold away from their families.

The plantation overseer catches Boy and takes her to Mrs. Yancey at Bel-Le-Mont Plantation, who believes her to be LeMont, her runaway boy. Boy, by now, has come to believe that in this life she is Overtha, another runaway slave of the Yancey’s. She wants to try to find her way to Freetown where she has been told her mother is living; however, life as Mrs. Yancey’s petted boy is easy, and she feels her mind becoming lazy and begins to realize that it is easy not to think about finding Overtha’s mother or returning to her own parents and time.

Only when Lookup, a storytelling runaway slave arrives at the plantation does she decide to run again. Boy and Lookup find Ike and Isaac, and Boy discovers that Lookup is Isaac’s mother for whom they have been searching. Despite danger to themselves, the slave family offers to help Boy get to Freetown to find her mother.

As they travel through the woods and underbrush, Boy sees the landscape become more familiar and realizes that she is being pulled toward her own time. She must decide if she wants to continue her search for Overtha’s mother or return to her own parents. The pull of her parents is stronger, and she tries and fails to persuade Ike, Isaac, and Lookup to come with her across the water to freedom, but they do not understand her plea. Once again with her family, from whom she has been missing only a few minutes, Boy thinks of her people of the past and finally feels a deep appreciation for them.

Context

In A Girl Called Boy, Belinda Hurmence seeks to provide the reader with a clear view into the lives and spirits of slave children. Hurmence’s grandparents were homesteaders in Oklahoma, and she sees in the young black children the same courage as the early homesteaders had and brings this courage to the forefront in her novel.

She prepared herself for the writing of the novel by reading Slave Narratives (1941), the oral histories of more than two thousand former slaves which were collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s. The novel presents in detail the housing, foods, and events in the lives of slaves, and it holds little animosity toward slave owners. Both slaves and slave owners are viewed as credible people who are simply living their daily lives in the only way they know how. Within the slave quarters setting, Hurmence has woven a tight and suspenseful plot of Boy’s search for her slave mother and her search for her way home to her real parents.

A Girl Called Boy follows Hurmence’s first novel, Tough Tiffany, a contemporary story that received an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book of 1980 and a 1981 Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. Her third novel, Tancy (1984), continues to use the folk history of the Reconstruction Period gathered from the WPA project and also brings to the reader another view of black history and ethnic pride. With this type of novel, Hurmence has given young readers a previously unsung ethnic view of slave life. Her books do not praise or condemn but do leave her readers with a feeling of pride in the strength of their ancestors.