A searing exploration of the transatlantic slave trade from the Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
Imagine if the transatlantic slave trade was reversed.
Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves . .
Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugarcane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun. But though she lives in chains, Doris dreams of escape – of returning home to England and those she loves . . .
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication date: 30/04/2009
Blonde Roots
by Bernadine Evaristo
Review by Alex P
"What if Europeans were the enslaved and Africans were the slavers?" That is the question Bernadine Evaristo answers in this subversive book, a retelling of the transatlantic slave trade. This book is conflicting for the reader, and may challenge what you think you know about yourself. It's a mine-field of sorts, as you try to navigate through what you are reading vs what you know actually happened during this time period. I found myself less sympathetic to the English slaves in the story due to England's barbaric history, and then had to remind myself that in this book, that history doesn't exist. I laughed as a slaver spoke of the ridiculous pseudoscience of phrenology, only to have the sudden, chilling realization that it was genuinely used as a reason to enslave people in real life.
Thoroughly researched, engaging and confronting, it's one of Evaristo's more unusual books, but no less enthralling.
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