Black Books Review: The Long Song | Red
The Long Song
by Andrea Levy
Headline; 312 pp; £20.95
Andrea Levy’s novels from the tentative Every Light in the House Burnin’ to the accomplished Small Island have demonstrated a clear progression of her story-telling ability With The Long Song Levy’s writing has matured enough for her to tell the story of a horrendous time within black history without sentimentality but with real wit and poignancy.
Set in Jamaica during the run up to the abolition of slavery and its aftermath, The Long Song gives a nod to the classic English novels of the nineteenth century where the novel is structured as a story within a story within a story. At the centre of the book is the tale of slaves July and her mother Kitty, told by the now older and reluctant July. July’s story is then punctuated and book-ended by the narrative of her son Thomas Kinsman.
Levy uses her skill as a supreme storyteller to play with and dispel the myths of racial stereotypes. She depicts scenes which at first seem to support the negative received ideas that have been perpetrated throughout history about black people before recounting the actual truth of the Negro slave’s lives. And in one insightful sentence she taps into the fears that abounded in English nineteenth century society about the degeneration of white people if they became “infected” by the natives that they lived amongst.
Levy also touches on the inverse racism rampant in the slaves’ quarters. They grade themselves covering the colour spectrum from black to white as negroes, mulattos, quadroons, mustees and mustiphinos, knowing that to produce a child with the lightest colour skin will offer that child more opportunities in life.
The Long Song is an epic novel filled with many heartbreaking and poignant moments. But there are also glimpses of hilarity and dramatic irony such as when July locks up Caroline for her own safety during a slave uprising and promises to set her free when order is restored.
After reading Bernadine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots, I was reluctant to read another novel about slavery because I wasn’t looking forward to the feelings of injustice that I knew would burn within me when encountering the issues of racism, rape and violence against an oppressed people.
The revulsion for slavery does not abate but like Evaristo’s Blonde Roots, The Long Song takes its place in a canon of books where black British authors are trying to understand where they come from and what makes us who we are today and that is always going to be relevant despite how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
Pauline Walker
Red
Edited by Kwame Dawes and Kadija Sesay
Peepal Tree Press; 252 pp; £9.99
The colour RED symbolizes love, anger, danger, life and in this themed anthology of contemporary Black British poetry it represents the satirical to the painful to the quaint: ordering an African baby from Santa to dealing with trans-cultural adoption to the sound of a song, and much, much more.
It has been 10 years since the last collection of Black British poetry appeared on the scene with Lemn Sissay’s groundbreaking, The Fire People. For award winning editor Kwame Dawes, the biggest change for this genre is that it no longer needs to define its identity or announce “its presence and credibility in the literary world, and [is] simply about reminding readers that as poets, Black British poets are ultimately interested in the word and in the joy and challenge of making images and finding music through language.”
This is a distinctive collection of work that evokes beautiful and thought provoking imagery as demonstrated by the passionate ending of Somalian writer Abdullahi Botaan Hassan ‘Kurweyne’ whose work was translated into English by Martin Orwin. “I have not exhausted/what I know of red/let me finish my speech there/let me leave behind/a sentence in conclusion: whenever red dries up it becomes black!”
Hassan’s work sits amongst internationally renowned poets such as Jackie Kay, Dorothea Smartt and Lemn Sissay; award winning poets, Grace Nichols, Daljit Nagra and Fred D’Aguiar; poets from Dawes’s Afro Poetry School; and the writers are from throughout the British Isles; The Shetland Islands to Wales and those who have since moved abroad to as far away as New Zealand.
Each interpretation of the colour and its impact is personal and moving. For Patience Agbabi, who is of Nigerian heritage and was adopted by white foster parents, red signifies that “blood and heart mean more than black and white.” In Revenge, Bernadine Evaristo explores the impact of London’s terrorist bombings on Hardeep, a Sikh, who finds the alienation and hostility overwhelming. It is a powerful, pulsing poem.“Here/ we made one religion/ synonymous with terrorism: imprisoned, tortured, accused – / sowing more seeds/of revenge.”
Simon Murray wades into the controversy of the adoption of black African babies by rich Western celebrities. Adopting the writing style of a young child it is playful and littered with references to shiny expensive gadgets that jars with “afrikan aids” and buying “two white braselets to make poverty history.”
Red is sensual for Segun Lee-French with suya joints and nyashes: “a teasing smile suggesting/ it could be bartered, a promise of salty lips.”
This unpredictable collection of work draws upon different vernaculars from Africa and the Caribbean to create a luscious and rich resonating impression that RED can leave in the Black British consciousness.
Uchenna Izundu
