The Long Walk to Freedom, edited by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise

Why do readers endure the bleak realm of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games? Why do we march through bog and storm with hobbit Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy? It cannot simply be our love for adventure or our fascination with magical or dystopian lands. We are drawn to the underdog who opposes and overcomes overwhelming forces. We get caught up in the friendships and the love stories of people who maintain families and protect their homes against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Stories we consume by the millions in fiction have a very real counterpart in U.S. history of the 19th century, when African-American writers created literary adventures just as exciting as those crafted by Suzanne Collins and J. R. R. Tolkien. Hundreds of runaway slave narratives detail heart-wrenching dramas of families torn apart and of heroes hiding from hounds or standing up to rapists. They even involve magical escapes during which God answers prayers for liberation. In one case the answer came in the form of a wooden box three feet wide, two feet high and two feet deep. “Get in,” God said, and the slave obeyed.

If you do not believe that these dramas are as moving as The Hunger Games or The Lord of the Rings, take a look at the excerpts of runaway slave narratives brought together by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise. If the drama of Frederick Douglass wrestling with his overseer doesn’t get your heart pounding, what will? If you don’t marvel at Henry Brown’s bodily contortions to fit into his wooden box, where he endured more than 20 hours before his “resurrection from the death of slavery,” can anything amaze you? And if you can hold back tears after reading how Bethany Veney stayed up all night with her husband as they tried to concoct a way to avoid his being sold, then you are stronger than me. “We talked late into the night,” she wrote, “and at last, in the silence and dread, worn out with sorrow and fear, my head on his shoulder, we both dropped asleep.” I’m tearing up even as I type her words.