Blonde Roots

Starred review from November 10, 2008
British novelist Evaristo delivers an astonishing, uncomfortable and beautiful alternative history that goes back several centuries to flip the slave trade, with “Aphrikans” enslaving the people of “Europa” and exporting many of them to “Amarika.” The plot revolves around Doris, the daughter of a long line of proud cabbage farmers who live in serfdom. After she’s kidnapped by slavers, she experiences the horror and inhumanity of slave transport, is sold and works her way back to freedom. The narrative cuts back and forth through time, contrasting the journey to freedom with the journey toward slavery. In a less skilled writer’s hands, the premise easily could have worn itself out by the second chapter, but Evaristo’s intellectually rigorous narrative constantly surprises, and, for all the barbarism on display, it’s strikingly human. Evaristo’s novel is a powerful, thoughtful reminder that diabolical behavior can take place in any culture, “safety” is an illusion and freedom is something easily taken for granted. This difficult and provocative book is a conversation sparker.

December 1, 2008
A pleasingly subversive, well-crafted novel of slavery and deliverance that turns conventions -- and the world -- upside down.
Evaristo (The Emperor's Babe, 2002) poses a prevocative question: What if African slavers on day showed up on the Cabbage Coast and hauled off the inhabitants to work on plantations on some distant continent? That's how the heroine , an Englishwoman named Doris, came to be the chattel of Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I (referred to as Bwana), who "made his fortune in the import-export game, the notorious transatlantic slave run, before settling down to life in polite society as an absentee sugar baron, part-time husband, freelance father, retired decent human being and, it goes without saying, sacked soul. Bwana has his Simon Legree-esque moments, but then so d o all the slaveowners. There are Uncle Toms and Mammies among the pale-complexioned transplants from what the Africans call the Gray Continent (because, obviously, the skies are so gray there), but Doris mostly minds her own business and pines for the fjords until she's swept up in rather elaborate events that take her on the runaway path to freedom -- or so she hopes. Along the way she encounters long-lost relatives ("Mi cyant beleeve it. Me reelee cyant beleeve it," one exclaims upon seeing her). Evaristo, the English-born child of a Nigerian father, has obvious great fun toying with some of the saintly slave and dastardly master conventions of the slave-narrative genre, and if her story has some of the dire possibilities of P.D. James' near-futurist Children of Men, she favors ironic laughter to gloom -- though there is gloom too ("I looked around and saw my future: ha ggard, hunchbacked women whose arms were streaked with the darkened, congealed skin of old burns"). Watch for the smart plays on real-world g eography and history; the where-are-they-now notes at the end of the book are not to be missed either.
A light entertainment on the surface, but with hidden depths; nicely written.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from February 1, 2009
What would the world be like if Africans had enslaved Europeans, instead of vice versa? Evaristo, the daughter of an English mother and a Nigerian father as well as the award-winning author of three previous novels (e.g., "The Emperor's Babe"), brings such a world to life in this speculative historical fiction. Told through the voice of Doris (renamed Omorenomwara), who was stolen as a child from her home in Britain and sold into slavery, the novel manages to inject some wry, dry humor into its heartbreaking narrative, thanks to its intelligent and sarcastic heroine. The horrors and indignities of slavery are explored in terrible detail, but Doris's unflagging spirit and thirst for freedom keep the story moving. The wide variety of characters, the examinations of image and identity, and Doris's own adventures may make this a popular selection for book groups. Highly recommended for all academic and public libraries.Alicia Korenman, Florida State Univ. Lib., Tallahassee

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2008
As a young girl, Doris is captured by slavers, taken from her familys poor cabbage farm to the New World to work on the plantation of wealthy Africans. Evaristo, daughter of an English mother and Nigerian father, not only turns the history of African slavery on its head, she mixes times and places: waistcoats and hooped skirts along with modern slang and subways trains on the Underground Railroad. Doris is given the slave name Omorenomwara but holds onto memories of her family and a life of freedom, though lived in poverty. Doris works for a while in the Big House and later, after a failed escape attempt, as a field slave. In first-person accounts, Doris and Captain Katamba, an African slave ship captain, offer their perspectives on the hated trade in human flesh. Acclaimed British author Evaristo captures and reverses the social dynamics that cause people to adapt and to protect their cultureunder the oppressive and dehumanizing conditions of slavery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)