This week I read the novel "Washington Black" by Canadian female author Esi Edugyan. When I made my first reading list, most of my books were non-fiction books directly addressing racism. But early on I heard a Black voice plead that white readers branch out in their reading to include books by Black authors as well, to understand the Black experience through arts and culture also.
"Washington Black" is about the experience of a young Black save from Barbados. It starts on a plantation but moves through other locations as the main character is liberated from slavery but still dealing with the lasting effects throughout the world. We get to see into a brilliant young mind wondering how to make his mark in the world, how to have his voice heard, and how to navigate interracial relationships in a post-slavery world.
It would take a much closer second and third reading to discover the nuances in this story. The differences between a white author and a black author writing about slavery will be stark. There is something about digging into your own past that changes the voice from someone who is simply narrating someone else's past. I could sense the tone of the book was different from others I've read on the same subject, and I wonder if it could be attributed to this sense of authorship.
A few quotes that stood out, and some thoughts on them:
"It happened so gradually, but these months with Titch had schooled me to believe I could leave all misery behind, I could cast off all violence, outrun a vicious death. I had even begun thinking I'd been born for a higher purpose, to draw the earth's bounty, and to invent; I had imagined my existence a true and rightful part of the natural order. How wrong-headed it had all been. I was a black boy, only - I had no future before me, and little grace or mercy behind me. I was nothing, I would die nothing, hunted hastily down and slaughtered."
(Passages like these are what stood out as different from previous stories I've read on the subject of slavery. It made me think about how the author as a Black woman relates to these feelings, 200 years later. How many generations passed down feelings of inadequacy? How many Black voices feel today called to something more and then beaten down by the systemic racism in which they live? How many purposes are sidelined? How many souls are crushed? How does the legacy of slavery still affect people today?)
"Such were the times. I saw myself grow flint-like, and bitter, and fill with a restlessness beyond all sleep. Out walking one afternoon, I picked up a discarded piece of tin in the street, and peering at my reflection there, I saw in my eyes a lightlessness, a methodical will for violence. I knew I must move on, or kill, or be killed."
(This description of what it is like to be constantly hunted by a bounty-hunter scarred my heart. I began to contemplate the physiological changes that take place for people under such great stress and duress. There seems to be to be an echo of this today: while the duress is not physical in the same way it was for slaves, the constant fight for emotional existence must have consequences.)
" "You took me on because I was helpful in your political cause. Because I could aid in your experiments. Beyond that I was of no use to you, and so you abandoned me." I struggled to get my breath. "I was nothing to you. You never saw me as equal. You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men." "
(This passage rang through from characters 200 years old; it rang through from the author's heart and pen across a country. This passage leapt from the page and I knew it wasn't about the characters within the story. As white people struggle with the reality of the Black experience in 2020, we are struggling to recognize it as a human experience apart from our own. To be able to detach ourselves from the picture is something we have never had to do; to this point, the entire world has revolved around the white voice. The White Savior complex is an easy default, in that everything we do can still appear to be reaching down to an inferior collective that need saving. This passage is a reminder that the real struggle is to view all humanity as equal yet different. To acknowledge the importance of variety in our world and yet resist the human urge to place hierarchal order on that variety.)
No comments:
Post a Comment