I read these 2 books and after ruminating a while to let facts and narratives seep in, I was intrigued with how they both push forward the urgent need for reparations for Africa and its diaspora- but do so using very different perspectives of history, and using very different literary styles. It made me think of that Diane Di Prima quote: “NO ONE WAY WORKS. It will take all of us / shoving at this thing from all sides / to bring it down”. The way the past is delivered to us is not a just, nor neutral, nor ‘honest’ process, but it will take efforts from everyone in society to untangle and repair damage done by the white supremacist lies and violent erasures of life that ensure the continued destruction of our world: university scholars decolonizing their academies and average joes like you and I using our voices and pockets. I would have included governments in that call for reparations, but in order for them to give that they would have to very literally rip their own hearts out (if they have hearts?) and contradict the very assumptions on which they place their power… a whole other can of worms entirely and so I SHALL NOT DIGRESS FOR THE MOMENT.
I first read The Interest, by Michael Taylor. It’s very thoroughly researched, written concisely and clearly without becoming too confusing for those like me who want to learn about history but are not exactly experts. Taylor’s book traverses the period of the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, connecting the revolts of enslaved peoples in the Caribbean to the work of abolitionists in the UK and how these forces fed off each other to oppose ‘The Interest’: the merchants, plantation owners and colonists who also happened to be politicians, owners of the country’s most influential newspapers and publishing presses, and close chums with the monarchy. The book blows the myth of British humanity and civilized justice out of the waters. I liked the way Taylor did not only put the obvious racists on blast, but also critiqued the anti-blackness of abolitionists themselves as putting more obstacles in the way of emancipation. The first wave abolitionists who got the 1807 bill passed which outlawed the trade of enslaved peoples, but not ownership of them, did not go far enough. Wilberforce and co. did not want to rock the boat too much, they lived in that boat. They did not want Africans to be brutalized or sold, but they did not think African culture civilized enough to ‘allow’ the people to be free ‘yet’. The fact that these Europeans even thought they had the power to ‘allow’ freedom and control time whilst thinking they were being charitable (Western Christianity has a lot to explain…) leaves a sour taste in the brain, but this is exactly the point Taylor is trying to show. Yes, The Interest was the main bulwark against emancipation, but anti-blackness was/is endemic to the whole of British society.
Taylor himself is a white man, and he acknowledges at the beginning of the book about the inherent ironies and questions that come with him writing this case for reparations. To quote him directly:
“…I am a white man who was born into a middle-class family. I went to a grammar school and then to Cambridge… As such, some readers might think that I am exactly the wrong person to write a book about slavery… this book is primarily a history of how white Britons have thought, written, and acted about slavery… it is worth remembering that just as slavery was always something done to people, it was also something done by people- and almost always, in the British case, by educated white men. It follows that this book, which narrates and seeks to explain that history of exploitation, necessarily focuses on those historical figures.”
However, this intellectual analysis of history and politics inevitably does feel a little distant, not lacking life per say, but definitely not effusively emotional. This feeling of mine intensified after reading Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle, a fictional narrative (still informed by historical research) of a young boy who takes part in the 1760 rebellion in Jamaica, Tacky’s War.
The Interest is a non-fiction book aimed towards adults, whereas Cane Warriors is a fictional book aimed towards young adults. I didn’t know the book was YA fiction until I finished it, but I think it’s this accessibility of prose and the immersive-ness of voice that Wheatle creates which was so compelling to read against the rationalizations of The Interest. Taylor shows the wide, systematic panorama of the saga of abolition, whereas Wheatle’s tactics are way more interior. Offering us a more intense version of the story, a more embodied and urgent telling, through the eyes of one young boy Moa. Moa is 14 when he decides to join up as a Cane Warrior and rebel against the white plantation owners. The bonding of Moa with his friend Keverton as both become fighters, and his determination to stop white men from sexually abusing his young friend, Hamaya are what makes this fight that happened hundreds of years ago feel so relevant still. The fight may not be with fire and weaponry, but it’s still waging: black men continue to have the odds stacked against them globally, black women continue to be some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, and white governments still think they have all the answers to problems they cause themselves and perpetuate. Moa and Keverton’s (and Hamaya’s) defiance of the odds and persistence in the face of impending defeat, clearly hits home that the impetus for abolition did not at all lay with the cold calculations of white people in high places, but with the soul and strength of the people themselves. Without people like Moa making it very clear to colonists that their interference was not welcomed, white people never would have had the shattering of their economic foundations and racist biases which would precipitate changes in their own countries, leading to abolition becoming mainstream. Just as without people on the streets marching for BLM or activists working committedly in their communities, white governments, businesses and brands would not be pressured to act on behalf of black lives (or pretend to).
I can’t help but feel also that a part of this differing tone of urgency between the books can also be attributed to the different positions and experiences the two authors have had. Whereas Taylor’s education was always supported and shepherded by white institutions, Alex Wheatle came to writing through a very different avenue. His young life being affected by the UK care and education system, then being brutalized by police and put in jail during the Brixton riots- Wheatle read The Black Jacobins after his cell-mate lent him a copy, and this book contributed to the inspiration to write. Wheatle’s genius was denied as the system tried to crush him, the very same system which now would use his books to teach children… Taylor was gently introduced to academic theorisations of colonization and anti-blackness, whereas Wheatle lives the real deal. In fact, his own mother "was raised in the small market town of Richmond in St Mary parish, north-east Jamaica. Richmond is adjacent to the old slave plantations."
The contrasting views of one boy fighting the colonial system versus an impersonal account of the machinations of those distant schemers are both separate views of the same terrible whole, and it will take acknowledgment and co-operations of both analyses to make effective change. Factual studies mean nothing if they aren’t honouring spirit of the people which make up the statistics themselves, and I only hope that as the struggle for decolonization and reparations continue, that more black people will have access to the funds, archives, and knowledge historically secreted by colonial institutions to finally begin the deconstruction of how we think about the world and each other, and thus how we treat each other. Moa did not wait for permission to claim what he knew was his, and may that be a lesson to us all.