Master Slave Husband Wife with Ilyon Woo

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You may not be familiar with their names, but William and Ellen Craft were a determined enslaved couple who made their escape through disguise and performance, and in their success, defied the limitations of gender and race. Sharon talks with Ilyon Woo, author of “Master Slave Husband Wife,” which beautifully depicts their epic journey from slavery to freedom. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends. Welcome. Delighted to have you with me today. My guest is the incomparable Ilyan Wu, who has written a book that the New York Times says was one of the 10 best books of the year. I mean, that is saying something. It is called
0:22.1	master, slave, husband, wife. And this is a story you want to hear about. So let's dive in.
0:33.0	I'm Sharon McMahon. And here's where it gets interesting.
0:45.2	I am really excited to be chatting with author Ilyan Wu today. Thank you for being here.
0:48.7	I am thrilled to be here with you. Thank you for having me.
0:52.5	Truly a pleasure. I was really excited to see you this morning. I think people are going to absolutely love this conversation about your new book. And I would love to hear more about master, slave, husband, wife,
1:04.7	an epic journey from slavery to freedom. First of all, I love the title. It's very evocative. It makes you feel like I want to know more
1:13.5	about what is happening in this book. So give us like a very brief high level synopsis about what this is
1:19.8	about. Well, I will first say that the original title for the book was Master S husband wife an American love story and that was
1:31.3	changed at the very end and I'm still a little bit attached to that original subtitle because I think
1:37.6	in many ways it says it all it's a love story about William and Ellen Kraft this incredible couple from Macon, Georgia, who escaped
1:45.8	bondage in 1848. It's about the love that they inherited from those who loved them before they
1:52.3	flood bondage. It's about the love that propelled them on this just unbelievable escape. And it's the
2:00.2	love that they carried into the world, into the world
2:03.7	as they fought for justice, as they fought to create a family on their own terms. And really,
2:10.3	the love that led them through life, that they carried through life to the very end of their
2:15.6	days. So this is an American love story.
2:18.8	I love that. A lot of times people don't realize how little control sometimes authors have over
2:24.4	some things related to their books. Did you feel like, okay, I'm going to let go of the subtitle
2:29.3	because it's for the greater good, but I still really like it the most. Is that how you felt about it? I kind of threw the
2:35.8	subtitle under the bus because I really wanted the title so badly, you know, because the language
2:40.5	that we're using to talk about this history is changing moment by moment. And so we're not using
	...

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