Blonde Roots [Hardcover]

Bernardine Evaristo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2009

A provocative novel that upends the history of the transatlantic slave trade, reversing and reexamining notions of savagery and civilization, as it follows a young woman’s journey to freedom.

Award-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Blonde Roots asks: What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? And how would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers—and sometimes festers—today?

We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman who is kidnapped one day while playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields near their home. She is subsequently enslaved and taken to the New World, as well as to the imperial center of Great Ambossa. She movingly recounts experiences of tremendous hardship and dreams of the people she’s left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.

A poignant and dramatic story grounded in provocative ideas, Blonde Roots is a genuinely original, profoundly imaginative novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. British novelist Evaristo delivers an astonishing, uncomfortable and beautiful alternative history that goes back several centuries to flip the slave trade, with Aphrikans enslaving the people of Europa and exporting many of them to Amarika. The plot revolves around Doris, the daughter of a long line of proud cabbage farmers who live in serfdom. After she's kidnapped by slavers, she experiences the horror and inhumanity of slave transport, is sold and works her way back to freedom. The narrative cuts back and forth through time, contrasting the journey to freedom with the journey toward slavery. In a less skilled writer's hands, the premise easily could have worn itself out by the second chapter, but Evaristo's intellectually rigorous narrative constantly surprises, and, for all the barbarism on display, it's strikingly human. Evaristo's novel is a powerful, thoughtful reminder that diabolical behavior can take place in any culture, safety is an illusion and freedom is something easily taken for granted. This difficult and provocative book is a conversation sparker. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker

This dizzying satire imagines a counterfactual history in which the roles of Africans and Europeans in the slave trade are reversed. Doris Scagglethorpe, the daughter of English farmers, is one day snatched up from her countryside cottage by traders and sold into slavery, soon arriving on the continent of Aphrika with a master and a new name: Omorenomwara. Evaristo (who is British and biracial) couples troubling stereotypes with scenes of slavery�s hardships that are moving but somewhat generic, as if to poke fun not only at a genre or at received notions of race but, more subversively, at the contemporary reader�s privileged desire to empathize. Unfortunately, this approach precludes any truly searching exploration of the psychological implications of such a traumatic historical event, and can result in a game of invert-the-reference�the celebration of Voodoo mass, slaves being referred to as �wiggers��making for uncomfortable but ultimately cheap laughs.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1 edition (January 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594488630
• ISBN-13: 978-1594488634
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What If?, January 26, 2009

By 

Phyllis Rhodes (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blonde Roots (Hardcover)

In Blonde Roots, Benardine Evaristo's latest novel, an alternate universe exists in which Aphrikans (Africans/Blacks) are the dominant race and the slave trade imports Europans (Europeans/Whites). The author has redrawn the map of the world as we know it. A graphical depiction provided in the opening pages shows Londolo, a capital city of the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa, located directly below the equator and immediately off the coast of Aphrika. The puns and acerbic bites of satire are not solely reserved for the cities and kingdoms, the character's names, cultural references and comparisons in art, clothing fashions, language, religion, and courtship are all fair game for clever commentary.

The novel opens in the anti-abolitionist offices of The Flame, a pro-slavery publication, printed by Omorenomwara's owner, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I (note the irony of his initials: KKK). Omorenomwara, a trusted, literate, 30-something year-old slave, is editing the latest issue when given a note informing her that she has been selected to begin her journey back to the Motherland (Europa) via the Underground Railroad. It is then, via a series of flashbacks, that we learn that Omorenomwara is really Doris Scagglethorpe, who spent an idyllic cabbage-farming childhood in an Europan serfdom shared with her parents and three sisters. Innocence is lost when, at age 10 she is snatched by a Viking during a game of Hide-and-Seek and sold to the blaks. While the races maybe reversed in the novel, the horrors, cruelty, and inhumanity of the trade is the same. Doris's recounting of the Middle Passage, enslavement, loss of identity and self-esteem, as a result of her servitude as a playmate to the plantation's spoiled "miracle baby," are aligned and echo actual experiences. Her botched escape, recapture, punishment, and relocation to a sugar cane plantation allows the reader to experience the harsher side of slave life and the ways by which slaves adapted to the back-breaking labor and coped with the inhumanity of it all via song, reverent prayer, inner-strength, and inter-family dependence. Doris's story has some contrived bitter-sweet moments, but I like that the author paved the way for some semblance of happiness for her character.

The novel is complete in that it taps the common taboos by covering the gamut of superstitions (both races), nuances in tastes (spicy vs bland foods), perceptions on beauty, etc. While the author attempts to infuse comical anecdotes and witty retorts (some are quite good), the somber subject matter dampens the humor. The Slave Trade is a stain on the fabric of humanity and its waves are still reverberating some 400 years later. This book would be a great educational tool and potentially a great device to kick-start race-related discussions.

Reviewed by Phyllis
January 25, 2009
APOOO BookClub

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This could have been big, really BIG., February 25, 2009

By 

Bethany L. Canfield "Dreadlock Girl" (Corvallis, OR,USA.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blonde Roots (Hardcover)

The premise is that back in the day of slavery ships and wealthy slave owners, the roles were reversed. African's owned lands in Ambrosia where European indentured servants were transported (yes, middle passage and all). Europeans take on the exact role that Africans really did have in history. They are viewed as being dumb, ugly, savage-like, and not having human ties to their offspring.

Blonde Roots follows one Englishwoman (Doris) who is kidnapped from her family of cabbage farmers while playing outside with her siblings. She is taken to Ambrosia and only dreams of getting back home. She is torn from her family and displaced into slavery and the bonds and ties that brings. Half way through the book (or part way) we hear the story for a little while from the perspective of the slave owner, Bwana and then back to Doris, the slave for the conclusion.

Bernardine Evaristo wrote this portrayal in a modern way, using modern slang and things that would not have existed at all then, which is acutally something I partially appreciated. The writing is interesting, and the concept is stunning. The idea of the novel is strong, but in my opinion not well executed. I felt it horribly lacking in power. I never felt connected to Doris, the other slaves or the slave owners...and I wanted that! I didn't care really if they even made it that is how much I just felt her writing fell flat thus not allowing me to form emotional bonds with the characters.

One thing that I did find interesting is that over and over I had to remind myself that the slaves where Europeans! Whenever I am reading a book I have an image in my mind of the characters and what is happening. In Blonde Roots I kept realising that in my mind's eye I kept reversing the roles to the way that they actually were. I felt bad at first that I kept switching it back and didn't know if that would make me look horrid to confess that on here. I thought about it and really came to understand that my mind just was stuck in a rut, as it is really hard for me to imagine the roles reversed! And yet, that is the way it could have been!

There were many good things about this book, but as I am an avid lover of good character development and well formed plots....I can't say I feel that Bernadine Evaristo ended up giving her novel the potential that it had in concept. I felt immensely confused and disconnected against my own will.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blonde Roots is Brilliant, February 9, 2009

By 

David No Relation (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blonde Roots (Hardcover)

This really is a wonderful book. If a better one is published this year, I'll be amazed. It's got everything: a story that builds and builds so that you can't wait to know what happens next; characters so vividly realized that you feel you know each of them personally and care desperately about what happens to them; an incredible amount of humor, even though its subject matter is far from trivial; and an awareness and understanding of how people behave that challenges and changes how you think. A book about slavery that is funny, lively, makes you cry and provides a completely different slant on what being "black" and "white" actually means - I never thought it could or would be written!