I hate when I read a book and forget to review it right away - I am simply not reliable to remember the details of the reading experience once I've moved on to another book. Which is all to say, this is what I think I thought about
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan's third novel and second Giller Prize winner.
Esi Edugyan is the kind of writer who makes me ashamed to think that I could ever aspire to be a published author. Her skill with character, plot, language, culture, history, atmosphere, and so much more is stunning.
Washington Black begins in Barbados (💗!), and travels to Virginia, Nova Scotia, Inu lands, England, Amsterdam and Morocco, all following the growth of our titular hero, Washington Black (aka Wash).
One of the most striking elements of slavery revealed in Wash's story is how subject to the vagaries of fate and whiteness slaves were/are. The death of a relatively "kind" (one cannot own another human and be kind, but bear with me) master leaves Wash subject to a cruel and mercurial master. Rescued from that fate by the new master's "kinder" scientist brother, Wash has the protection of an "exceptional" mind, setting him apart from the other slaves and from many of the white people - and the free people of colour - he encounters on the plantation and once he and the master's brother flee Barbados.
If I had written this review last year when I read the book, this exceptionalism may have gone unnoticed and uncommented on. As I've recently been doing a lot of reading, listening and learning in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, however, the trope of exceptionalism feels somewhat problematic to me. His intelligence and artistry endear Wash, but I feel uneasy knowing that he has an easier life because of it. Why is the sweet, young, talented boy worth saving but his older, coarse, uncompliant mother figure isn't? Of course he never escapes racism or cruelty in all its iterations and measures no matter where he roams, and I appreciate that truth. Exceptionalism in relation to white supremacy allows for a black president of the United States to be considered "not that black." It allows for highly successful black Americans (Oprah, Tyler Perry, LeBron James) to be considered not representative of the communities they come from. Exceptionalism erases colour by raising the individual "above" others and above the systems in place to keep them "in their place." As a white reader of a book by an Afro-Canadian author, I am aware of this exceptionalism and I assume that Edugyan is using it in some other way - a way I am undoubtedly blind to.
Regarding the scientist brother "saviour," it's possible also to argue that he was not so much kinder as less honest about his assessment that Wash is disposable, useable, and less than fully human. He is painfully exploitive of the problem of the notion of the white saviour. It is a strength of Edugyan's characters that no one is wholly good, no one is predictable, and the "good" are only ever really "less bad" - and that in bits and pieces. Titch's complicity in the slave trade feels much too much like my own complicity in white supremacy for me to be at ease with his role. I am more at ease with the parts of the story that don't include him.
Quick-witted, intellectually stimulating, richly peopled and atmosphere, and moving at a compelling pace,
Washington Black is a hugely readable and deeply enjoyable book. When Albert Camus said "fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth," Edugyan was exactly the kind of truth teller he was speaking of, and how fortunate we are to have truth-tellers like her.
Oh, and keep an eye out for the octopus. What an octopus!
