Introduction
Little attention has been devoted to the captured Africans’ experiences during the Middle Passage when they were shipped across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery. More importantly, few texts have attempted to capture the African spirit of resistance during the long journey from the shores of West Africa to the Caribbean. The effect of this omission is that it creates the impression that Africans were submissive and meek victims of slavery. Daniel Black challenges this notion in The Coming, in which he depicts the captured Africans’ symbolic resistance against the attempts to dehumanize their black identity and cause them to give up their African heritage. Through the embracing of their culture, the characters in the novel preserved their connection to their motherland. In this regard, the characters’ efforts to hold on to African cultural and religious beliefs can be interpreted as a form of symbolic resistance against slavery and its dehumanizing effects.
Main body
Black’s The Coming offers a new perspective on slavery, through the depiction of symbolic resistance of Africans against their captors’ attempts to dehumanize their identity as black people. It is a refreshing departure from previously written texts to portray the harrowing experiences of black people during slavery. From the memoirs of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Olaudah Equiano, there is no shortage of first-hand accounts of life in the South’s plantations. Collectively, these texts reveal the dehumanizing nature of slavery through the descriptions of the physical work and torture, as well as the emotional and psychological pain, which slaves had to endure. In The Coming, Black presents the idea that Africans’ resistance against enslavement did not begin with rebellion in the plantations, but long before they arrived in the Caribbean. This resistance started aboard the ships, expressed through the captured slaves’ reluctance to discard their African cultural and religious beliefs.
The first gesture of symbolic resistance is the narrator’s first-person plural style of retelling the African experience of the Middle Passage. This narration style reflects the African tradition of celebrating communal living, whereby the individual views the self as part of the community. The narrator asserts this collective identity by stating:
“We were the Fon, the Ibo, the Hausa, the Ashanti, the Mandinka, the Ewe, the Tiv, and the Ga. We were the Fante, the Fulani, the Ijaw, the Mende, the Wolof, the Yoruba, the Kongo, and the Mbundu. We were the Serere, the Akan, the Bambara and the Bassa. And we were proud. We knew our ancestors by the name” (Black 17).
This reference to the various Africa tribes to which the different characters belonged, captures the way they took pride in their connection to the African culture. By embracing their culture, the characters are able to resist the attempt to make them feel worthless and inferior.
The characters in the novel derive strength and determination from their sense of connection to black heritage, through their African names. The narrator asserts this connection when he says that “Our names told us who we were. They told us why we’d been sent. What was expected of us. We were not confused. We were not ashamed. We were not perfect, but we were excellent” (Black 51). This quote suggests that the characters endured suffering because they were proud of their African origin, and consequently, they could not give up their identity as black people did.
The author emphasizes the symbolic significance of the African religious beliefs by highlighting the role of African spirituality in giving the captives a sense of hope. The narrator says that “We promised our gods that, if we were successful, we’d tell the story of our unthinkable journey and remind our people never to lose faith. We made all sorts of promises on that ship” (Black 24). This reference to the African gods strikes a parallel to the Hebrew God the Israelites prayed to for deliverance from servitude in Egypt. The narrator emphasizes this comparison when he says that “In other moments we talked to silent gods. Oshun? Obatala? Yemaya? Allah? Can you hear us? They did not reply” (Black 25). The belief in the African gods suggests not only the relevance of African spirituality in giving hope to its believers but also signifies the characters’ reluctance to recognize the Christian God of their oppressors.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Daniel Black’s The Coming portrays the symbolic significance of African cultural and religious beliefs in representing the Africans’ resistance against the cruel treatment they went through as slaves. Using the first person plural voice of the narrator, Black reveals the African tradition of community and the characters’ common heritage of black people. It is this shared heritage, which gives them the strength to resist the attempts by slave owners to demean the image of the African body. Moreover, the characters’ reference to their African gods demonstrates the role of African spirituality in giving its believers hope in the face of oppression.
Work Cited
Black, Daniel. The Coming. St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2015.