Callaloo

What I want people to focus on is the idea that if the table were turned historically and Africans had enslaved Europeans, what would that mean in terms of how we a) view that history and b) understand notions of civilization and savagery. Hopefully this parallel universe gives readers a modern and historical context through which to reexamine this issue.

—Bernardine Evaristo

In her 2008 interview with Lane Ashfeldt discussing her neo-slave narrative Blonde Roots, author Bernardine Evaristo makes her intentions clear. Readers are situated in what she describes as a "parallel universe" in which Africans, as the slavers, perform the atrocities of transatlantic slavery—from the horrors of capture and bondage, to the racist ideological underpinnings. In order to circumvent the usual "strong responses including anger, defensiveness, resentment, self-righteousness, guilt, sadness," Evaristo humorously reverses and inverts the signs of transatlantic slavery (Newman 285). Her claim that utilizing a parallel universe gives readers a context for revisiting the atrocities of both the modern and historical is simple enough. At its base level, shifting from white slaver/black slave to black slaver/white slave forces readers to occupy different bodies. More than passive receivers of this history, we become active participants. Occupying new bodies and their inherent subject-positions allows readers to see the world anew and observe it with critical acuity.

Interestingly, in spite of Evaristo's intention, strong reactions do abound. Ingrid von Rosenberg argues that "rather than continuing in the accusing mode" and "wanting to get away from the stereotypical image of blacks as victims and to boost black people's self-confidence" Evaristo and other novelists "have taken to re-constructing history by highlighting their cultural achievements and cases of resistance in 'true' and in invented stories and images" (382, emphasis added). Sofia Muñoz-Valdivieso contends that through presenting "different centers of enunciation," Evaristo's multiple character perspectives of slavery allow for an "inclusive approach," rather than an exclusive approach to slavery (56). Indeed, what both critics reveal, perhaps inadvertently, is that while engaging with the history of slavery, Evaristo has succeeded, not in avoiding, but in exposing the strong reactions, self-positioning, and predispositions of both lay readers and critics.

Muñoz-Valdivieso and von Rosenberg's readings indicate that our familiarity with the narrative of slavery is central to the success of Blonde Roots. The defamiliarization of [End Page 174] our inherited notions of slavery and conquest relies on an invisible mathematics. Readers navigate Evaristo's novel by re-reading the landscape of our material history parallel to that of her fictional world.¹ Thus, in the process we are in a constant state of tension, calculating the equivalencies and inequalities of Evaristo's fictional world and the material world. Acutely aware of the truths (and untruths) of the constructs of our universe, we consciously and subconsciously navigate between the two worlds, the comparisons replicating a kind of exchange. If we regard the slave with compassion in our nonfictional world as we reflect on the horrors of familial separation in the historical memory of slavery, then we offer the same compassion to the "whyte" Doris as we encounter her separation from her family in Evaristo's parallel universe. Similarly, if we regard the "blak" Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I with revulsion as he rationalizes the enslavement of "whytes," we are reminded of the folly of the racialist underpinnings of Enlightenment thought. Thus, irrespective of the race of our protagonists and antagonists, when equal, this exchange underscores the brutality of transatlantic slavery without assigning blame or wallowing in its incomprehensibility.

While race is a variable in this calculation, the one constant, according to Judie Newman, is socio-economics: "Class remains an important factor, complicating a racial reading of slavery" (291). She draws upon the capitalist nature of the slave trade and the significance of social class, offering that "class solidarity is prioritized over gender" and "in the end it is the capitalist practices that offer the only means of real resistance" (295). Kathleen Burkitt agrees, highlighting Evaristo's implementation of medieval serfdom:

Evaristo presents a historiography of slavery which complicates...