Sienna Brown

It's not so long ago that we were cringing with embarrassment when That Fool in Canberra declared that there was no slavery in Australia, but most keyboard warriors were thinking of the unpaid labour of Indigenous people when they went into action to set him straight. Sienna Brown's debut novel, shortlisted for the 2020 ARA Historical Novel Prize, tells the story of a different kind of involuntary unpaid labour in Australia.

Based on historical research into the lives of West Indian convicts in the Hyde Park Barracks database, Brown's novel tells the story of William Buchanan, born into slavery in Jamaica in the pivotal period when abolitionists in Britain were beginning to agitate for an end to the slave trade. William narrates the story in his own patois, tracing his childhood as the less-preferred son of the plantation owner Massa Cargill and the house-slave Bessie. The narrative continues into his adulthood and participation in the rebellion led by Samuel Sharpe and the aftermath of that.

Wisely, Brown does not portray the very worst examples of slavery in Jamaica. If anyone wanted to defend slavery by claiming that atrocities were in the minority, this novel shows that even in a comparatively benign regime, slavery was still intolerable, immoral, wicked and cruel. Gone With the Wind may be a well-loved American classic for some readers, but its hero fights for the Confederate cause, i.e. to retain slavery in the south, to protect a lifestyle portrayed with contented field slaves and 'Mammy' as a member of the family. This nostalgic glorification of plantation life dependent on dutiful slavery is deeply dishonest, but in Master of My Fate the beatings, whippings, and routine rape of women shows that dutiful slavery was always underpinned by violence.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/12/23/master-of-my-fate-by-sienna-brown/… (altro)