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A review by jassmine
The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole
adventurous
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Unless I am allowed to tell the story of my life in my own way, I cannot tell it at all.
I think this book got on my TBR as a result of reading Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World which I really loved at the time (2022) when I read it. It's kind of surprising that this is one of the first books from that list I got to (although I already read Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea) since although I was interested in Mary Seacole she wasn't at the top of my list of most "amazing women mentioned". But she was still pretty high.
Anyway, the start of this was pretty rough and I was doubting whether picking this up now was a good idea (I picked it to fulfil my one-classic-a-month goal). This was mostly because of the racism of the time - Mary Seacole has to start the book by defending her position as a Black woman and Creole, battling away some of the prejudices and stereotypes of the time and I felt kind of gaslight as a result. (I'm kind of sensitive about talks about laziness and productivity at the moment.) But after that rocky start we were all good.
I did find it pretty interesting that she primarily identifies herself as a Creole, which might make perfect sense to you if you think Creole means a child of white and Black parents but that's actually not what Creole meant at the time. (Thank you for that lesson Wide Sargasso Sea!) Creole is a descendent of Europeans that was raised in Caribbean - so Creole isn't really a racial indicator (since Creoles could have been white, biracial, Black...) She also pays way more attention to her Scottish father at the beginning than her mother and both of them are kind of absent from the narrative, although father definitely more than mother and yet we get to know more about him! There is certainly some internalized racism at play, but definitely less than I thought from the beginning. A lot of the coyness seems to be more part of the literary style than the way Mrs. Seacole actually felt about some things. (That, or she was a saint.)
Anyway, there is a lot of really emotional and moving passages even though Seacole clearly isn't writing this as a tearjerker. She doesn't dwell on the deaths of her patients and friends for long, but she still manages to infuse them with so much feeling that I did tear up multiple times.
I feel like I should spend more time to talk about the actual content of the book since I spend so much time on the Creole question, but I'm getting tired and I just don't feel like it much...
Anyway, if you made it this far through my review and don't know who Mary Seacole is I feel obliged to tell you. Mary Seacol is often called "the Black Florence Nightingale" she was born in Jamaica and she calls herself "doctress" she is most famous for being a nurse/hotelier during a Crimean war (1853-56) which is also what takes about half of this book, although we also spend some time in Kingston in Jamaica and Panama.
Overall, this is such an interesting historical document and I did learn quite a few new things. If you are interested in reading this take in mind that there are depictions of slavery and quite disgusting and severe racism in the first part of the book such asone person complimenting Seacole that she is so good that if he could he would bleach her and enslaved woman being whipped by her owner and being threated that her baby will be hurt if she leaves , there is also quite a lot of death and the second half of the book is set during a war in Crimea, which I really should have think through better when picking up, but it is also kind of the perfect time to pick it up, I guess that it depends on your style of response to trauma.
There isn't really an overarching plot, so some readers might find the book boring and hard to get through. I honestly might have been one of them, but I listened to the recording of LibriVox (which you can access for free), so that turned out to be pretty perfect: https://librivox.org/wonderful-advent...
Would recommend although this book wouldn't be for everyone for sure.
Anyway, the start of this was pretty rough and I was doubting whether picking this up now was a good idea (I picked it to fulfil my one-classic-a-month goal). This was mostly because of the racism of the time - Mary Seacole has to start the book by defending her position as a Black woman and Creole, battling away some of the prejudices and stereotypes of the time and I felt kind of gaslight as a result. (I'm kind of sensitive about talks about laziness and productivity at the moment.) But after that rocky start we were all good.
I did find it pretty interesting that she primarily identifies herself as a Creole, which might make perfect sense to you if you think Creole means a child of white and Black parents but that's actually not what Creole meant at the time. (Thank you for that lesson Wide Sargasso Sea!) Creole is a descendent of Europeans that was raised in Caribbean - so Creole isn't really a racial indicator (since Creoles could have been white, biracial, Black...) She also pays way more attention to her Scottish father at the beginning than her mother and both of them are kind of absent from the narrative, although father definitely more than mother and yet we get to know more about him! There is certainly some internalized racism at play, but definitely less than I thought from the beginning. A lot of the coyness seems to be more part of the literary style than the way Mrs. Seacole actually felt about some things. (That, or she was a saint.)
Anyway, there is a lot of really emotional and moving passages even though Seacole clearly isn't writing this as a tearjerker. She doesn't dwell on the deaths of her patients and friends for long, but she still manages to infuse them with so much feeling that I did tear up multiple times.
I feel like I should spend more time to talk about the actual content of the book since I spend so much time on the Creole question, but I'm getting tired and I just don't feel like it much...
Anyway, if you made it this far through my review and don't know who Mary Seacole is I feel obliged to tell you. Mary Seacol is often called "the Black Florence Nightingale" she was born in Jamaica and she calls herself "doctress" she is most famous for being a nurse/hotelier during a Crimean war (1853-56) which is also what takes about half of this book, although we also spend some time in Kingston in Jamaica and Panama.
Overall, this is such an interesting historical document and I did learn quite a few new things. If you are interested in reading this take in mind that there are depictions of slavery and quite disgusting and severe racism in the first part of the book such as
There isn't really an overarching plot, so some readers might find the book boring and hard to get through. I honestly might have been one of them, but I listened to the recording of LibriVox (which you can access for free), so that turned out to be pretty perfect: https://librivox.org/wonderful-advent...
Would recommend although this book wouldn't be for everyone for sure.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Slavery, War