Bloodlines [Paperback]

Fred D'Aguiar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2003

Using the intimate rhyme scheme of Byron's great picaresque Don Juan and the narrative devices of Pushkin's enduring Eugene Onegin, D'Aguiar creates poetry dazzling in its inventiveness and wonder. Moving from the Civil War to the present day, Bloodlines follows the lives of five characters, each trying to escape the bonds of slavery. Among them is the narrator, who knows neither of his parents because, by the time he is born, his black mother has been sold back into slavery and dies in childbirth, and his white father has been indentured as a boxer in a traveling fair. Cursed by the thwarted love of his parents, the narrator is condemned to bear witness until the races become equal. He speaks to us of his quest for freedom.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

D'Aguiar (Feeding the Ghosts; The Longest Memory) uses the form of an epic poem to eloquently convey two generations of oppression and sacrifice. The 19th-century narrator, who remains nameless, employs modern language and metaphors to tell his story, beginning with his conception and continuing through the tragic separation of his parents: his mother, a slave, and his father, a plantation owner's son. But this is sophisticated material: what begins as a rape evolves into a romance ("This is the nature of sweet transgression:/ after the fact bodies become solicitous;/ black and white locked in illegal passion"), and the two flee the plantation together. They are captured and humiliated by white men she is raped repeatedly, sold and taken west; he is bound and defiled. Throughout the 10 sections of the poem, the narrator's voice intermingles with the mournful songs of his 17-year-old mother, Faith, who dies in childbirth, and his father, Christy, who becomes a traveling fighter after Faith's return to slavery. Traditional poetic structures frame the vibrant, contemporary language ("Her love did more damage to her body/ than all the lyrics in all the pop songs slammed/ together have done to a sentimental boy/ or girl in suburbia on a diet of MTV jams") and powerful images of loneliness ("I am stripped bare by the light, bare and/ lonely, my bones wrung clean, the clean/ bones ground to dust, scattered in the four winds"). This saga of a man shunned by society will long echo in readers' minds. Ages 14-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Best known in the United States for his fiction (Feeding the Ghosts, LJ 1/99), British-born D'Aguiar here attempts a modern novel-in-verse in the formal style of Vikram Seth's Golden Gate and Anthony Burgess's Byrne. It's a story of slavery or of its societal consequences narrated from beyond the grave by the son of a black slave and a white indentured boxer. Written in rhymed, eight-line heroic stanzas la Byron, Bloodlines nevertheless employs an uncluttered, contemporary syntax and diction, taking a ground-level view of history that uncovers the personal intimacies behind cataclysmic events and impassive social forces ("history is shelves of human spines in the dark"). His oppressed characters struggle simply to be themselves ("Raceless/ like light") and pay dearly for their hubris. D'Aguiar falls victim to some rhythmic awkwardness and stretched figures ("My life's a brick house for death to demolish;/ stories from a brick a day cannot be abolished") in service to the rhyme scheme, yet his effort is engaging for its earnest enthusiasm and avoidance of narrative gimmicks. While Bloodlines may not tell us anything new about racism, its plea for a race-neutral society ("love turns us all from base metal to gold") remains vital. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.. Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (November 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585674567
• ISBN-13: 978-1585674565
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,375,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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