This August 23rd is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, and the 9th of this month was International Book Lovers Day.
This overlap matters because fiction can feel more real than books that seek to share facts. The first person intimacy and the experience felt through use of the present tense can transport you far closer to a sense of the truth of complex experiences.
Reading fiction is not just a process of world-exploring or following a riveting plot, it is a getting to know, feel and even see and anticipate (depending on your sense of imagination I suppose). When reading a book in which the author’s writing encapsulates you, you find yourself deeply exploring emotions through the journey of the story, which creates a sense of closeness to the characters that stays with you beyond the back cover. Thoughts that may never have crossed your mind can flood it with emotional understanding. Good writing can bring you to tears and fear and relief. Tiny details explored through novels can bring the two-dimensions of names, dates and events into tangible understandings.
Once you have experienced the world through the eyes of another, the easier it becomes to empathise with real others and imagine the multitude of complexities that every person is living through.
I believe that it is wholly possible to learn more about life through fiction than through fact. 😊 Through reading we can seek to listen to those who have suffered from slavery and we can remember.
Recommended Reading
I am jealous if you are yet to read any of the below books:
She would be King by Wayetu Moore:
- Overlapping local traditions, culture and magic, this novel is set in a place which then goes on to become the state of Liberia.
- It is rich in detail and yet pacey, following three very different experiences including, a person born enslaved, someone exiled from their community in an African village and the son of a British researcher (read: pathological colonial glory seeker) and his relationship to a native woman.
- It’s a powerful and sensitive book that explores not only the experience of people enslaved, but the impact on the communities that remain in Africa who fear the arrival of slavers, and the children born to colonial fathers who wear the violence visibly through their differences with other people in their communities.
- This book got me to think about all that was involved in navigating the forced assimilation of native people into the communities that people returning from America imposed/ celebrated in their freedom. The colonial weaponry / ideology being repeated in the newly formed state of Liberia.
Beloved by Toni Morrison:
- A heartbreaking and looping story following a woman haunted by her life enslaved.
- It taught me something of the generational trauma which can become engrained into the minds and bodies of survivors of slavery, and you eventually piece together how someone (anyone) can choose to do the impossible.
- This book is a testament to how far people can be pushed into horror and yet still seek to love others.
Home Going – Yaa Gyasi
- Sisters whose lives follow interwoven but unspeakably different paths.
- 300 years of Ghana from the 18th century told through the lives of the children and descendants of the sisters.
As well as focusing on slavery it also touches on the introduction of cacao as a crop in Ghana through to the jazz age in the US.
Other Essential Reading
Non fiction: Solomon Northup’s – 12 Years a Slave
Fiction: Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
