THE LONG SONG Historic Novel of Slavery in Jamaica by UK The Long Road to Change

Andrea Levy (b UK 1956-2019) is a writer of astounding talent.  Her historic novel of slavery in Jamaica embarks around 1834.  The year the King of England decreed slavery illegal.  England outlawed slave trade in 1807 but did not abolish slavery.  Despite ordered emancipation in 1834, the brutal oppression of slavery persisted. Its savagery & inhumanity is sharply felt as is the repugnance of the British plantation owners & white overseers.  Indigenous Jamaicans were forced into slavery and captured natives from the West Coast of Africans were forced into slavery.  Levy was born in the UK to Jamaican parents.  Her eloquence is expressed through the voice of the novel's heroine, July.  July is born a slave on a sugar cane plantation & taken coldheartedly from her mother as a little girl by the mistress to be her servant.  The time sequence fugue is enveloped by July's writing her life story.  Her life and the lives on the plantation are put to paper at the coaxing of her son, an established printer.  July's is an artful raconteur.  Her life unfolds back in time & place.  We feel the pain & indignities of slavery as we build a connection to our storyteller.  July's epic tale begins with a fore- warning "Consider whether my tale is one in which you can find an interest.  If not, then be on your way." Robert Goodwin is the dastardly plantation owner who lords over the slaves.  Goodwin contrives to make July his mistress & mother of his child yet relegates her life insignificant.  Despite the proclamation banning slavery, many Jamaican slaves rightly feared slavery would persist & their lives to remain shackled in servitude.  For who would carry out the labor to keep the whites embedded in luxury & prosperity?  Still, many considering themselves free remain adamant in their resistance to yield to subserviency.  Goodwin's father wrotes his son, "I'm sure as the new master of the plantation called Amity, the injustice of that abominable state of slavery will become just a distance memory...Once burdened like beasts, they will be able to go happily about their tasks under your compassionate guidance." {Not a chance!} The resistance from the emancipated Jamaican slaves wrecks havoc to the sugar cane industry dependent on free labor.  A consensus by plantation owners as a solution was to harvest slaves from India; referred to as coolies. White people's religious convictions serve as a malevolent justification for hierarchal ownership over other races.  Goodwin proselytizes amongst the freed slaves, "Grant us this day the blessing to turn the negroes of Amity back from sin, to the path of righteousness, so that they will labour once more upon this plantation, as is your divine will." A caste system amongst people of color is observed favoring lighter skinned Negroes.  Levy's trenchant epic is profound.  It was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2010.  July knows the control welded by the lash yet understands "...the power embedded in words that can nevertheless cower the largest man to gibbering tears."