But he tells the story from the slave’s standpoint and it’s a way for McBride to give a voice to the people Brown fought for. He has no education, a limited vision of the world. His only experience with life is living in his master’s saloon with his father. Henry is our only narrator and of course, he’s unreliable. He becomes Henrietta, nicknamed The Onion. Minding only of his safety, Henry decides to go with the flow and be a girl if need be. He just changed the truth till it fit him.
It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. But the Old Man heard Pa say “Henry ain’t a,” and took it to be “Henrietta,” which is how the Old Man’s mind worked. Courageous friend, I will take you and your Henrietta to safety.” See, my true name is Henry Shackleford.
This kidnapping happens at the beginning of the novel and McBride introduced an comic effect: Brown (The Old Man) thinks Henry is a girl. Kidnapped is a neutral word here, because, depending on which side of slavery you stand, Henry was either “stolen” or “freed”. (Btw, this is also the story of Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks.) The narrator is The Onion, a young black boy who was kidnapped by Brown when he arrived in Kansas.
The God Lord Bird relates Brown’s story from the moment he arrived in Kansas to the fiasco of Harpers Ferry. According to historians, Brown’s campaign and its press coverage were one of the sparks that kindled the Civil War. He took part in other battles and his last one was a raid against the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He’s responsible for the Pottawatomi Massacre in 1856 (Kansas) where his group killed five supporters of slavery. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride relates the story of John Brown (1800-1859), an American abolitionist who was in favor of armed insurrection to abolish slavery. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (2013) French title: L’oiseau du Bon Dieu.
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