Nightjohn

Nightjohn is a book for young adults, written by Gary Paulsen. It was first published in 1993, it was made into a movie that aired on the Disney Channel in 1996. It is set at a plantation in the Southern United States in the 1850s. The narrator and protagonist of the story is a young African-American slave named Sarny, who is taught to read and write by another slave, Nightjohn. The two friends soon learn that their literacy makes them independent, illiteracy being one of the tools used to keep slaves in their oppressed state.