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A review by naddie_reads
Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop
3.5
This is the second book I’ve read by David Diop, and tonally “Beyond the Door of No Return” feels different than “At Night All Blood is Black”, which may be in part due to Diop’s choice of.
Translated from French, the book follows Michel Adanson, white French botanist in 1749 who, upon his death, revealed to his daughter the story of a Senegalese woman named Maram whom he had become obsessed with while he had been on a research trip in Senegal. The legend of Maram and her miraculous escape from slavery played a central role in Michel’s journey in Senegal, though we also see Michel’s role while he participated in the colonial exercise of an empire based on the slave trade which forms the heart of the narrative.
Diop’s choice of POV that centers around a white man obsessed with a black woman which ‘humanizes’ him when juxtaposed against the other white colonizers made for an interesting choice. It’s similar to Hanya Yanagihara’s “The People in the Trees” in that sense — they both expose how, in addition to the resource exploitation rampant during these countries’ colonizations, science is also being used as a tool to exploit the countries’ people and cultures. The examination of the ethics of such practices may be subtle in this particular book, but they are there between the lines nonetheless. I don’t particularly love this as the writing is far less poetic compared to “At Night All Blood is Black”, but I do appreciate how the book raises the question of morality, ethics, and the so-called White Man’s Burden ™️ which nobody had asked these white men to take on in the first place.
Translated from French, the book follows Michel Adanson, white French botanist in 1749 who, upon his death, revealed to his daughter the story of a Senegalese woman named Maram whom he had become obsessed with while he had been on a research trip in Senegal. The legend of Maram and her miraculous escape from slavery played a central role in Michel’s journey in Senegal, though we also see Michel’s role while he participated in the colonial exercise of an empire based on the slave trade which forms the heart of the narrative.
Diop’s choice of POV that centers around a white man obsessed with a black woman which ‘humanizes’ him when juxtaposed against the other white colonizers made for an interesting choice. It’s similar to Hanya Yanagihara’s “The People in the Trees” in that sense — they both expose how, in addition to the resource exploitation rampant during these countries’ colonizations, science is also being used as a tool to exploit the countries’ people and cultures. The examination of the ethics of such practices may be subtle in this particular book, but they are there between the lines nonetheless. I don’t particularly love this as the writing is far less poetic compared to “At Night All Blood is Black”, but I do appreciate how the book raises the question of morality, ethics, and the so-called White Man’s Burden ™️ which nobody had asked these white men to take on in the first place.