Mind Picker: Washington Black

My first master named me, as he named us all. I was christened George Washington Black – Wash, as I came to be known. With great ridicule, he said he'd glimpsed in me the birth of a nation and a warrior-president and a land of sweetness and freedom. All this was before my face was burnt, of course. Before I sailed a vessel into the night skies, fleeing Barbados, before I knew what it meant to be stalked for the bounty on one's head.

Before the white man died at my feet.

Before I met Titch.

Washington Black opens upon a Barbadian sugar plantation in 1830, as the title character recalls the circumstances that allowed him to escape his preordained life of miserable slavery. The opening bits – as the old master dies and a new one imposes fresh cruelties in order to establish control over his inheritance – is brutal and raw; I was breathless with horror. Soon enough we learn that Wash is telling this story as an eighteen-year-old Freeman – so this isn't really a story about slavery – but as he looks back on his barbarous upbringing, and as he attempts to reconcile what he was taught to believe he was with what he has become, the plot spans the globe – with an experimental “cloud-cutter” hot air balloon, deep sea diving with a copper-helmeted wetsuit, polar exploration among the Esquimaux – and as Victorian Age white men lead the way in scientific research, Wash finds himself in their shadows, carving out a place for himself. Like a mashup of Verne and Dickens and Twain, this book definitely didn't go where I expected it to, but as the story unspools into fabulist territory, the very real Washington Black himself demands to be seen and asks: Just where are the persons of colour in this heroic history of the world? I would have read this book whether or not it had been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year – I adored Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues when it came out – so while I will agree that this might not have the literary heft of the usual Booker nominee, it is exciting and thoughtful and I was enchanted with Washington Black from beginning to end.

I carried that nail like a shard of darkness in my fist. I carried it like a secret, like a crack through which some impossible future might be glimpsed. I carried it like a key.

Not long after Erasmus Wilde takes over Faith Plantation, eleven-year-old Washington Black and his protectress, Big Kit, are summoned to the manor house and asked to serve dinner. This is a terrifying prospect for a couple of dusty field slaves, and while there, Wash catches the eye of the visiting younger brother of the new master. When this Christopher “Titch” Wilde sends for Wash to relocate to his own quarters, Kit arms the boy with a stolen nail, and I was made breathless once again. Wash is named assistant to the gentleman scientist, and when the boy demonstrates intelligence and an innate talent for illustration, Titch also teaches the child to read and write (against Erasmus' wishes, for he knows the boy will eventually be returned to the cane fields). Wash knows better than to trust a white man, but as he struggles to determine whether he is respected by Titch for his own gifts – or whether he is simply a pawn in the secret abolitionist's cause – he finds that he has developed the self-respect that the overseer's cudgel endeavours to stamp out. Before Wash can ever get a proper read on Titch, the plot takes off.

It had happened so gradually, but all these months with Titch had schooled me to believe I could leave all misery behind, I could cast off all violence, outrun a vicious death. I had even begun thinking I'd been born for a higher purpose, to draw the earth's bounty, and to invent; I had imagined my existence a true and and rightful part of the natural order. How wrong-headed it had all been. I was a black boy, only – I had no future before me, and little grace or mercy behind me. I was nothing. I would die nothing, hunted hastily down and slaughtered.

As a Canadian, I loved that Wash finds himself up on Baffin Island, and with a father from the South Shore of Nova Scotia, I love that Wash spends time there, too. (And regarding Nova Scotia and what I've witnessed there, as also found in The Book of Negroes, I appreciate this historic nugget: “White men were everywhere aggrieved, and they would sometimes rise up against us black devils, the miserable black scourge who would destroy their livelihood by labouring at cheaper rates.”) It's appropriate to a Victorian “Age of Wonder” novel to have the action visit London and Amsterdam and Marrakesh, and I loved all the early tech instruments made of brass and hand-ground lenses and oiled furs and slate; it's not quite steam-punk, but it's innovative and real.

Much is made of freedom and family obligations (more than one white character has the nerve to “envy” Wash's security and lack of hard choices as a slave), and even once Wash is technically emancipated, that doesn't free him from prejudice and lack of opportunity (with a female character, Tanna, along for the journey, this point is also made for a Victorian Age Englishwoman). There is plenty bubbling under the surface of what reads as an adventure tale, and while Washington Black can be read on a couple of levels, it may not be Booker deep; I'll still be rooting for the home team; this is my kind of story.

Man Booker Longlist 2018:

Snap by Belinda Bauer

Milkman by Anna Burns

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

In Our Mad And Furious City by Guy Gunaratne

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Long Take by Robin Robertson

Normal People by Sally Rooney

From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan

I just barely squeaked in reading the Man Booker Prize shortlist this year - after having to order half the titles from England - and I really don't know if any of them stand out to me as "a real Booker winner to stand the test of time". In order purely of my own reading enjoyment, I'd rank the shortlist:

The Long Take
Washington Black
The Mars Room
Everything Under
The Overstory
Milkman

* The prize was eventually won by Milkman, my least favourite of the shortlist, so what do I know? *

*****

09/09/18

Delighted to have met Esi Edugyan at a publishing event tonight. Let's hear it for the home team!