Customer Reviews

Feeding the Ghosts

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This work is the best story expounding the imhumanity the peddling in flesh trade produced. By providing a portrait of victim and victimizer, Feeding the Ghost shows the banality humanity faced when coupled with the bottomline. I really, enjoyed this book and suggest that everyone read this story. Moreover, the imagery of the African coast, Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean folk culture leap off of the page into one's imagination. What more can I say than kudos to Fred D'Aguair. And strongly suggest that everyone read this vivid portrayal of life not so long ago.

D'Aguiar takes the creative license to create a story about a woman Mintah on the Middle Passage of the slave trade. When disease starts affecting those on board the slave ship Zong, the captain orders all the sick to be thrown into the sea. The narrative then closely follows Mintah as she survives being thrown overboard, climbs back on to the ship, lives secretly in the supply room with the help of Simon, the young cook's aid, and writes her experiences in a journal. D'Aguiar's language throughout the novel is simplistic yet so effective in describing the extraordinary events that surround Mintah, our heroine, that it is impossible to not be engaged with the storyline.

The only time that I felt that the narrative was jarred was in Part 2. This is the only part when D'Aguiar moves away from Mintah's perspective. Perhaps other reader consider this section to be necessary to the progression of the plot. I just wished the transition from the ship Zong to the court room.

An image manipulated in the novel is the sea. It comes to represent a conqueror, a friend, or an enemy. Its implications as a witness to and an embracer of the jettisoning of the Africans is thought-provoking and incredibly compelling.

Read this book. It will make you cry over something, whether it be the subject matter, Mintah's relationship with Simon, or just the lovely diction and imagery conjured by D'Aguiar.

D'Aguiar has written a very good version of what occurred on the slave ships as the Atlantic was crossed on the way to the Americas. He has made the reader experience the horrors as if they were there to see the horrendous events that happened. It is a useful selection in the library of a reader who is interested in the African diaspora.

Feeding the Ghosts belongs with Johnson's Middle Passage and Morrison's Beloved for offering an accurate portrayal of the immense human tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade coupled with the amazing power of resilience. D'Aguiar's novel reminds us that those we may see only as victims of a brutal system constantly fought that system; their resistance continued even as their hope for a future free from inhumanity disappeared. From the opening line of the novel, "The sea is slavery," the narrative reveals the many ways that the enslaved were at the mercy of their captives, yet it chronicles the repeated efforts of one slave in particular--a young, English-speaking woman--to find a small remnant of humanity in her captors and turn that humanity into freedom.

In addition to the novel's sobering re-creation of the indignities of the slave trade, its imagery and spellbinding writing offer a subtext that explores the power of language. Though the merchants of and investors in the slave trade were allowed to describe and control the language with which the trade was conducted, the final word is yet to be spoken. D'Aguiar's voice joins with that of his character Mintah to help us redefine this peculiar institution.

I picked this book up in london in january and read most of it on the plane on the way home to boston. it is a wonderful story, heart-wrenching in detail, that tells of the greed of slave-ship owners (and, more importantly, of the horror of the lives of africans who made the journey across the atlantic). it is not a book you will want to put down once you start... d'aguiar has created one of the best reads this year, and i'll not be surprised to see it become an oprah pick when it is released here later on.

Eventhough it is a short novel the author could have done a much better work sticking to the essence of the drama and the court proceedings about the conduct of the captain of the vessel. But he choose to dwell a little bit to much on some philosophical wonderings of Mhirta which loosen the tension and did not add much to the development of the work.

I was actually rather disappointed by the book. The subject matter is obviously very important and emotional, but I felt that the book didn't deliver as much as it could have. At various points in the text, the metaphorical passages seemed somewhat contrived and unoriginal.