Dr. Landell started her presentation by showing a disproportion between Caribbean slavery testimonies and their American equivalent: the testimonies of Caribbean slavery that had survived and been published are most American ones. For example, the Mammy, the Sambo and the Mandingo are stereotypes of black people and find their origins in colonial racists’ slave apologist writings which intent to justify slavery. Hence, it is essential to make out what makes the Caribbean slave narrative distinct from its American equivalent, and what exactly has been disregarded and what exactly is missing.

Then, Dr. Landell shared why she chose black humanity and the non-human world as keywords. As a black person, she felt she had a “innate fear of the non-human world” which turned out to be a “generational trauma”: her inner fear and anxiety of trees, oceans, and even dogs and horses found its roots in slavery, because, for black slaves, trees could be lynching tree; a sight of the ocean could become a huge vessel for shipping enslaved people; and dogs and horses are used to chase slaves who ran away. Dr. Landell’s relationship with the non-human world is tainted by the experience of slavery, even though she has not personally experienced it. Thus, she considered it essential to explore the phenomenon of the charactonym (the Mammy, the Sambo, the Mandingo) of a human group out of a justifying oppression purpose, its extent, and how it was influenced by colonization.

What struck me most is how Dr. Landell linked some neo-slave writings with female body. Neo-slave narratives are contemporary fiction accounts of slavery, first emerging after WWII and proliferating in the late 1960s and 1970s, such asThe Long Songby Andrea Levy. The focus on subject formation also reflects a critical turn away in the 21st century from use of the term slave and a move toward the term enslaved African to underscore personhood and humanity rather than solely highlighting slave status. The neo-slave narrative is often marked by a fully developed black subjectivity that complicates, or directly calls into question, traditional historiography of “master” narratives (Raquel Kennon, Introduction). It effectively dismisses centralist and hegemonic ideas about race and gender via the methods of dialogism and issue polyphony. Dr. Landell mentioned that Grace Nichols put forward two types of mother images during slavery in I is a Long Memoried Woman in 1983. “One being the material mother, and the other being the symbolic and the spiritual: the enslaved black woman and her African motherland.” The engagement of the two lies in they are both violated. Firstly, enslaved black women suffered forced separation from their children, and there was also a separation between Mother Africa and its inhabitants. “In doing so, the poet engages with history by exposing and responding to the justifications for such violence in pro-slavery apologist writings.” Dr. Landell not only exposes the “interrelated domination of the enslaved mother and the motherland during slavery” via a comparative reading of multiple maternal images in Nichols’ collection, but also uncovers in what ways the enslaved people and African continent were “mammified”. The symbol of “umbilical cord” is introduced to explain how Africa and African people were forced to connect an umbilical cord to Europe and America, whom they fueled and nourished as themselves being drained and exhausted.

Dr. Landell also presented a poem that suggests “how the amniotic waters of the womb are connected with the ocean (nature)”. The poem goes as:

Child of the Middle Passage womb

push

daughter of a vengeful Chi

she came

 into the new world

birth aching her pain

from one continent/to another

Dr. Landell pointed out that “in here, it is describing the middle passage as a womb…‘push daughter of a vengeful Chi’ had already been getting a sense of resistance. She’s coming into the new world, and that is her experience that came out of the ship, entering into this new space. That’s why it says ‘aching her pain from one continent to another’. You get this sense of movement of transition of states.”

_{Grace Nichols}

Listening to Dr. Landell speak, I gained insights into the relationship between Black individuals and the non-human world, which I had never explored before. While I touched on the history of slavery in my high school and college literature classes, it remained a surface-level understanding. Dr. Landell’s research bridged my knowledge gap. I am looking forward to reading her doctoral thesis in the future.

Works Cited:

Raquel Kennon. “Neo-Salve Narratives.” Oxford Bibliographies. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0017.xml