A Day in Uncle Tom's Cabin

I didn't plan to include with this post the photo of Harriet Beecher Stowe that you see here. I intended instead to use a shot of the cover of her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yet when I did a "Google images" search to find a shot of her book cover, I could not find one that included her name. Okay, I did find one, but it included the names of illustrator and annotator in such imposing print that their names crowded out hers, which appeared in about 7 point type.

It seemed unfitting that the brilliant, witty, insightful mind behind this work of lit should lose out on one shred of the credit rightfully due her.

As with Dracula, I feel as if I'm reading a book right off the CBA list. (CBA used to mean Christian Book Sellers Association, but then CBA stores added t-shirts and DVDs and such, so CBA now just means C-B-A.)

At any rate, both Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Grapes of Wrath beautifully flesh out biblical teaching on social justice. In reading UTC I have laughed out loud and cried and shaken my head and shuddered and then laughed again. Somewhere I once read that the strongest argument comes with a one-two punch, the second blow being humor. Harriet Beecher Stowe surely knew this.

Both books seem incredibly timely. As if written in our time.

UTC contains much wisdom, revealing insight into how the powerful twist scripture to their own ends. Beecher-Stowe shows how a simple, humble, uneducated soul can have more spiritual insight than all the wise and powerful of this world simply by asking "would I want someone to do this 'unto me'"?