Bafflingly pointless

I made a mistake. A friend recommended Bernardine Evaristo and I clearly should have started with something else, likely the always highlighted "Girl, Woman, Other" ... alas, I saw what Blonde Roots was about, and was instantly intrigued. The idea was promising, for sure: What if the whole world of slavery had been turned upside down, a complete reversal where black people ruled and white people were the slave race. What would such a world have looked like? How would it have been?

Turns out - exactly the same. Exactly. There was no point to this story. None. Everything you know about slavery is, in this book, just as you've known it to be. The abductions, the slave ships, the abuse, the plantations - every horrible truth. It's just that black people are the masters, the slave traders, the violators - and white people are the victims. If all's the same, what's the point? There was nothing new to tell, nothing that was different. The story gives us two points of view, that of a white female slave, her life and escapes, and that of a black leader/slaver, his life and views. Switch skin colors and it would have been a straight-forward tale of slavery times. As a story, it was decent - but I guess it only became something that stood out by switching races, and by attempting to be satirical and 'clever' with similar yet altered naming conventions (such as niggers are now called wiggers).

I was so ready to love this story ... there's nothing clever about Blonde Roots, it's simply a photographic negative of what really happened - and has been told many times in unforgettable ways - instead of this, read Alex Haley's Roots and spend real time with Kunta Kinte.

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