Belated Long Songs: Neo-Slave Narratives by Black British Women Writers

This paper proposes to examine the way in which contemporary Black British women writers address the issue of (female) slavery almost two centuries after the first female slave narrative was published in the United Kingdom. While the author of The History of Mary Prince (1831) was accused of libel, Laura Fish's Strange Music (2008), Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots (2009), and Andrea Levy's The Long Song (2010) have been nominated for prestigious literary awards and are hailed as literary contributions to the 2007 commemorations of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Adopting a variety of genres, stylistic strategies and narrative perspectives, Fish, Evaristo, and Levy, explore the predicament of (female) slaves in the British Empire as well as the impact of the slave trade and slavery on British society. In doing so, I will show, they challenge conventional perceptions of British history and the British literary canon. In addition, with their literary "neo-slave narratives" (B. W. Bell 1987) Fish, Evaristo, and Levy respond to the life stories published by former women slaves in the 19th century, e.g. Mary Prince's History and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents (1861) but also to the neo-slave narratives conceived in the United States towards the end of the 20th century, such as the better-known literary slave narratives by African American women writers (Octavia Butler, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison) and the popular television series Roots (1977), based on Alex Haley's eponymous novel (1976).