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A review by serendipitysbooks
Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Blonde Roots is the story of a young girl who is kidnapped, transported across the sea in horrendous conditions, then sold as a slave. She is first put to work as a companion and playmate for her master’s young daughter but when that girls dies she is sold. She later escapes (despite her master claiming he is a good master and her position an easy and privileged one), is tracked down and recaptured, whipped then shipped to a sugar plantation. Eventually she escapes to join a group of maroons on the island.
So far this sounds all fairly typical for story centred on slavery. Yet in this world whyte Europanes were enslaved by black Aphrikans. Bernardine Evaristo has cleverly subverted the typical slave narrative and associated racial and colonial tropes by reversing and inverting the race of the main players. She has drawn far and wide in both historical and geographical terms for her source material so the world in this book is not an exact negative of any one place or period in ours. Much clearly comes from nineteenth century plantations; other material possibly from more recent immigrant experiences. I had fun recognising echoes of classics including Roots and Heart of Darkness. The novel cleverly skewers and satirises such notions as beauty ideals, innate racial characteristics, and notions of civilised vs uncivilised by simply reversing the positions of the races. If anyone is in any doubt as to the absolute wrongness of slavery, racism and colonialism the role reversal of this book should promote discomfort and a radical rethink. Even the majority of readers are likely to find something in this sly subversive story which gives them a new perspective, brings them up short, or provokes new awareness.
This isn’t my favourite book by Bernardine Evaristo but I really enjoyed it for its fresh and clever take on slavery.
So far this sounds all fairly typical for story centred on slavery. Yet in this world whyte Europanes were enslaved by black Aphrikans. Bernardine Evaristo has cleverly subverted the typical slave narrative and associated racial and colonial tropes by reversing and inverting the race of the main players. She has drawn far and wide in both historical and geographical terms for her source material so the world in this book is not an exact negative of any one place or period in ours. Much clearly comes from nineteenth century plantations; other material possibly from more recent immigrant experiences. I had fun recognising echoes of classics including Roots and Heart of Darkness. The novel cleverly skewers and satirises such notions as beauty ideals, innate racial characteristics, and notions of civilised vs uncivilised by simply reversing the positions of the races. If anyone is in any doubt as to the absolute wrongness of slavery, racism and colonialism the role reversal of this book should promote discomfort and a radical rethink. Even the majority of readers are likely to find something in this sly subversive story which gives them a new perspective, brings them up short, or provokes new awareness.
This isn’t my favourite book by Bernardine Evaristo but I really enjoyed it for its fresh and clever take on slavery.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Slavery, and Violence