Length: 334 Pages
Genres: Historical Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Trigger Warnings in this book for Slavery, Racism, Torture, Abuse, Violence, Gore
“How could he have treated me so, he who congratulated himself on his belief that I was his equal? I had never been his equal. To him, perhaps, any deep acceptance of equality was impossible. He saw only those who were there to be saved, and those who did the saving.”
After absolutely adoring Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues last year, I was excited to dive into more of her work, but with a bit of trepidation, too. So many times I'll click with an author's work, only to discover it was, for me, one of kind, and to be disappointed by the rest. Happily, I can say Washington Black was just as excellent as the other, and I've gone on to tell people I'd read a shopping list if Edugyan wrote it! Now, I can't wait to see what she tackles next, in her beautiful and oftentimes heart-wrenching prose.
George Washington Black is only eleven-years-old, but has known the darkest parts of mankind since birth. For he is a field slave on the Barbados plantation, Faith, and is expected to work, and continue to work, until he is of no longer use. He has no family that he can recall, but is looked after by Big Kit, another slave from Dahomey, who has become his surrogate mother. Life is violence and bloodshed and back-breaking toil. Big Kit dreams of killing the both of them in the hopes that their souls will return to Dahomey, but even their deaths are stolen from them -- when slaves start to kill themselves, the sadistic master of Faith, Erasmus Wilde, beheads the corpses. To them, this signifies that their souls won't be allowed to move on, but to stay in a horrific limbo, perhaps destined to haunt the sugar-fields of Faith.
Everything changes when Erasmus' younger brother, the inquisitive Christopher Wilde, called "Titch", arrives. He is an inventor who is hard at work on his "cloud-cutter", a sort of flying machine which he hopes to cross the Atlantic in. One night, Big Kit and Washington are called to the house to serve at dinner, and it is then that Titch decides to take on Washington, who will make the perfect size ballast for his invention. But Washington becomes much more to the erratic Titch: an apprentice, a confidante, a companion, an artist, a like-mind, but never, truly, his equal.
When the Wildes' cousin Philip kills himself, with the only witness being Washington, Titch knows that Erasmus will use the opportunity to take him from him, and possibly, to kill him. Desperate, they escape on the cloud-cutter, and into a fugitive life, running from a slave-catcher. Their adventures will take them from the brutal shores of America to the vast nothingness of Antarctica, and eventually, Washington, on his own and lost without his master, to Canada and England, Amsterdam and Morocco.
Washington was such a fascinating and complex and devastatingly real protagonist, just like Sid from Half Blood Blues. And just like him, you want to Titch to see him as more, to be what Washington so desperately needs him to be. This novel is one that will stick with you for a long-time afterwards, a masterpiece of history and humanity and science and belonging. After finishing it, it was no surprise to me that it was Booker Prize nominee in 2018! If you're not reading Edugyan, you're truly missing out on an incredibly timely and important talent, one I see going very, very far.
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