Slavery in Modern Caribbean Fiction

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Slavery in Modern Caribbean Fiction
Although the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe are famed for their tourist attractions, they are steeped in a long and brutal history of slavery, occupation, and colonialism. After their discovery by Christopher Columbus, the islands’ native Indians were massacred, and for many centuries, African slaves were shipped to the islands to work in the sugar cane, cotton, and coffee plantations. The islands were then colonized for brief periods by the French and British before the former restored their claim over the regions and their peoples. Modern-day Martinique and Guadalupe may be free of their colonial masters, but they continue to have limited autonomy and rely heavily on the French metropole. Given the enduring legacies of dispossession, slavery, and colonialism, such themes as dislocation, racism, and trauma continue to make their way into most of the writing originating from the two islands long after the end of slavery. For instance, the post-colonial novel Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel illustrates the identity, social class, and race struggles faced by many of the descendants of slavery in Martinique even after the institution was abolished.
Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Conde, another work of fiction from the region also highlights the distinct and profound sense of loss and identity experienced by the peoples of Guadeloupe as they navigate a post-slavery French Antilles society. This essay argues that although slavery was abolished in 1848, it continues to haunt modern Caribbean fiction, as is demonstrated by Zobel’s Black Shack Alley Conde’s Crossing the Mangrove. Black Shack Alley is a coming-of-age novel that explores themes of race and class discrimination, cultural assimilation, and the colonial educational system from the perspective of Jose Hassam. The novel relates the harrowing poverty of the rural setting, the brutal realities of the plantation society, and the confines of race and class to illustrate the continued exploitation of the black peasantry in Martinique’s colonial system. The childhood narrative relates a string of Jose’s existential transitions as he furthers his education and moves outside of the Black Shack Alley milieu to become a part of the working class. Plantation life is a pivotal element in the novel and serves to illustrate the centrality of the system in Martinique society and culture.
Zobel’s Black Shack Alley is a literary representation of the organization of plantation space and time in Martinique. The scene of the plantation is revisited compulsively from the start of the novel to illustrate how the non-evolving economic mode of production is still based and largely dependent on a slave structure. In the novel, plantation society is characterized by a strict hierarchical regimen: at the top of the pyramid is the plantation owner (who is mostly white and affluent), and beneath him is the overseer (who is either mixed or black but largely advantaged), followed by the blacks (the poor black peasants), and finally the child gang (of which the narrator is part) (Zobel). Plantation housing also follows the same organization where the privileged have proper home...