Evaristo, Bernardine - Blonde Roots

[oyceter]

In the world of Blonde Roots, the people of Aphrika have enslaved people of Europa, which lies in the Southern Hemisphere. The Middle Passage runs from the Cabbage Coast of Europa to New Ambossa and Little Londolo in the West Japanese Islands, and then back to Aphrika, particularly the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa.

Doris Scagglethorpe was kidnapped from her home and sold into slavery; she has since borne several children, all whom have been torn away from her, and is currently trying to escape. While Doris is the main character, the focus is Evaristo's worldbuilding. Europa is the Gray Continent; whytes try to flatten their noses and perm their hair to emulate blak standards of beauty; skience says the prominent jaw of blaks indicates their forward nature while the flatter skulls of whytes indicate smaller brains and less capacity for emotion. "Beating the hide of a Caucasoi is more akin to beating the hide of a camel to make it go faster."

It's a great concept, and sometimes the way Evaristo turns about tropes is brilliant. I particularly love the way Europa is exoticized and made Other, from cabbages to clothing to religious rituals to superstitious beliefs. The book is set in the past, I think, although there are the occasional mention of skateboards and trains, but it reminds me more of the deliberate anachronisms in The Emperor's Babe. But because it's set in the past, I feel the point might not get through to some readers, that they too will look at things like witch-burning and drawing-and-quartering and corset-wearing to be foreign and Other, and it will be all too easy to miss how those views and cultures shaped the views and cultures we have now.

On the other hand, I really don't know what Evaristo could have done about that, given that when Doris is at home in Europa, there's also a sense of familiarity instead of Otherness for me, probably just because of what I grew up reading. And there are some pitch-perfect moments, like when the whyte slaves sing old songs from their homeland such as "Happy Birthday" (a song once sung to celebrate a child's entrance into the world) and "Auld Lang Syne."

The narrative itself is brutal in parts, but not surprisingly so, given the subject matter, and the ending was actually happier than I thought it would be. I also love Evaristo's voice, which slips between historical and modern (more frequently modern), and is both tongue in cheek and dead serious at the same time. I wish I knew how she did it.

I don't think the concept entirely succeeds, but honestly, this is the best version of the black/white flip that I've seen, and I say that as someone who is not sure the concept will ever entirely succeed (not because of authorial skill, but just because of how difficult it is to Other the familiar and the multiple levels and complications that have to be addressed to not simplify things or to make it so "Oh, anyone can be racist!"). It's a very impressive reconstruction of the institutions of slavery, not just story of one slave.

Comments

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

I liked the conceit of flipping the real-world paradigm, but I think that in the end, the conceit became more important than the story. Maybe if you didn't know how unrelentingly brutal the slave trade was, especially in the Caribbean, if you'd never read any slave narratives, it would have been eye-opening. I did like the idea of the familiar being othered, like you mention with the slaves singing "spirituals" that a modern reaser would recognize as traditional Anglican hymns, or the idea that the Aphrikans viewed monogamy as an example of selfishness. But Evarista did so much of the direct one-to-one parallel that it felt to me like the book turned into a game of "spot the reference".

Part of the problem is that I went into it expecting an alternate history where one thing changed, altering everything down the line. In Evaristo's alternate history, one thing changed--and for the most part, except for some name changes, everything else stayed the same.

By the end, I wasn't sure what the author's message was. There but for the grace of go you? It takes enormous courage to survive in a world where there's a concerted effort to strip you of everything, especially your humanity? Given absolute power over another human being, people will inevitably abuse it? All of those seemed blindingly obvious, so I was left feeling like I must have missed something.

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

I liked the conceit of flipping the real-world paradigm, but I think that in the end, the conceit became more important than the story.

I'm a reader that really enjoys meta-textual dorkiness like the conceit of the book. It does trouble me when authors get too into the meta jokes/references and lose sight of the actual narrative. Except when the point of the book really just is the meta-text (like the "Tuesday Next" books). Except that this book seems to actually be about serious business, not jokes. Which makes the lapse really frustrating.

Reading slave narratives completely blew my mind. To go from "well yes slavery was quite awful, let me show you some graphs and statistics" to someone telling you first person about the horrors is really a mind fuck.

[oyceter]

Definitely agree that the book might be more eye-opening for people with less knowledge about the slave trade (and I don't actually know that much about it either, only enough to know that most things portrayed in the book was the rule and not the exception).

By the end, I wasn't sure what the author's message was.

After thinking about it a while, all I can come up with is it's mostly a wake-up call for white people or an attempt to get them to sympathize. And for black people... a way to vindictively laugh when all the rhetoric excusing slavery is made Africa-friendly and Europe-phobic. Uh, or maybe the vindictive laughter is only for mean and petty people like me.

As for other non-white people/POC, I wasn't sure. I was really wondering if the Native American genocide had still happened and if Ambossa was still trying to colonize China (it seemed so, given the settling of the New World and the West Japanese Islands).