Gary Younge talks with Andrea Levy, whose new novel, The Long Song, “is set on a Jamaican slave plantation.”
…I know my ancestors were slaves, but what did they do? How did they live? How did they manage to survive it? We know so little and very little of what we do know comes from them. The only way you can go any further is through fiction."
This was the curiosity that produced The Long Song, in which July tells her story, urged on by her son. Levy says she was inspired to write the book after a young black woman at a conference on the legacy of slavery rose to ask how she could have pride in her ancestry when all her ancestors had been slaves. I thought, 'Wow, how could anyone have any shame or ambivalence at having slave ancestry?’ She wanted to see if she could change this woman's mind and make her proud of her ancestry. – from “I Started to Realise What Fiction Could Be. And I Thought, Wow! You Can Take on the World,” by Gary Younge, The Guardian
…I know my ancestors were slaves, but what did they do? How did they live? How did they manage to survive it? We know so little and very little of what we do know comes from them. The only way you can go any further is through fiction."
This was the curiosity that produced The Long Song, in which July tells her story, urged on by her son. Levy says she was inspired to write the book after a young black woman at a conference on the legacy of slavery rose to ask how she could have pride in her ancestry when all her ancestors had been slaves. I thought, 'Wow, how could anyone have any shame or ambivalence at having slave ancestry?’ She wanted to see if she could change this woman's mind and make her proud of her ancestry. – from “I Started to Realise What Fiction Could Be. And I Thought, Wow! You Can Take on the World,” by Gary Younge, The Guardian