I picked this rather entertaining book at Heathrow. I have read it twice and both times I couldn't help chuckling or laughing at the humour throughout the book. I marvel at how one writes such a humorous book about such a grotesque venture as slavery and its aftermath? Funnier still is the vibrant Jamaican English in which the tale is told. It makes me want to visit the West Indies for myself. When I think of July (an inappropriate name for someone born in a different month altogether!) recounting the tale...I can't help thinking of my mother. I can imagine her spinning a yarn like this, telling us of some time in her past. The book is told from the perspective of July, a grandmother, retelling events of a certain time and place in her past with such humour that leaves one laughing and guffawing.
As always when I read a book, I decide whom I like best. In this book I quite liked July (both in her youth and in her old age), her son Thomas and Robert Goodwin. Thomas doesn't talk for himself but we hear about him (as we do most of the other character's) through July. Almost as a proud mother gossiping proudly about her son but not wanting to seem to be doing so.
The experiment that was slavery was quite an interesting one and it begs further objective analysis. With hindsight, one wonders whether it succeeded or failed. One thing I hadn't quite given much thought was whether the abolitionists considered how the ex-slaves were going to survive without land and without money after emancipation. Or did they just want to "tick a box...DONE". Compensation was given the slave owners but not to the slaves. It was assumed that one day they would be slaves and the next day they would be wage earners. What about those that did not want to continue working the fields? Inadvertently, the ex-slaves were set up for failure from the very start. In explaining her book, Andrea writes "those Island societies would not have existed today were it not for Britain and Britain would certainly not exist as it is today were in not for those Islands". Were the Islands simply explored so that sugar could be provided for the sweet British tooth? (I descend from a sugarcane growing people and a tea growing country). Who thought about the idea? Where did the original inhabitants of Jamaica (Xaymaca - Land of Springs) disappear to? I have often wondered, without an answer, as to whether the exploration, the cane fields and the expoitation that slavery were really worth it.
Slavery created an interesting society with new rules. First there were the field and the house slaves. Then there was also the colours between black and white. Negro, Mulatto, Sambo, Quadroon, 'tente-en-el-aire' (suspended child) and white. With of course many other shades in between. Even in the white society there were different classes...the plantation owners, the abolitionists, the preachers, the overseers and others in between.
I learnt something quite interesting about labour vs capital from the 'strikes' that happened at the Unity Plantation. Reminded me of the recent hospital workers' strike in Kenya. The solution was to get the coolies from India (another experiment) to work on the Islands instead of the freed slaves who had had enough of the cane fields. I presuppose that the people who benefited the most were those in the transport business. There was always something or someone to transport from some place or other.
I pitied Robert Goodwin who was as good as they came. Young and Idealistic but eventually disillusioned and depressed. I guess the fundamental mistake was that, his 'goodness' was not based on the equality of races but a need to be more humane to the lower breeds. Robert Goodwin and Thomas Kinsman both suffered a crisis of faith in completely different continents....both away from home. Master Goodwin, the white man, suffered his crisis in the West Indies and Mr Kinsman, a black man, in Britain. I can quite relate to them.
In between reading the book, I had interesting discussions with my children this weekend. So many years after slavery and with more understanding and globalisation, my teenage daughter said to me and I quote verbatim: "Another problem that I have come to notice here (Britain) is how people have such a silly outlook of Africa. All the TV's show are slums, sickness, people dying, drought, basically all the bad. You have to be the one to tell them 'Look I do not live in a slum, we live in houses, we own cars just like you do'. It gets so frustrating sometimes having to tell the story over and over again, but if only the TV's here started showing what Africa looks like, the good and the bad, we won't have to explain ourselves so much". My son, like many men, doesn't have too many words in his mouth. His simple response to me was "Oh that...We face it all the time but as a guy, I simply brush it off".
Their remarks summed up why I enjoyed reading Andrea Levy's - Long Song. That no matter how "inhumane" life was on the sugar plantations - pre and post slavery - (and no matter how "difficult" life is)....there is woven in between a story of joy, laughter and survival. For that, one can really be proud.
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