Читать книгу We Slaves of Suriname - Anton de Kom - Страница 13

That sense of inferiority can be counterbalanced by writing literature. De Kom states this in no uncertain terms: “No people can reach full maturity as long as it remains burdened with an inherited sense of inferiority. That is why this book endeavors to rouse the self-respect of the Surinamese people and also to demonstrate the falsehood …” (pp. 85). This is also one reason for the autobiographical basis of many works in this Black literary tradition; as witness statements rooted in fact, the stories are necessarily true. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance built on the literary “I” developed in slave narratives like those of Frederick Douglass. The near-classic opening “I was born a slave” serves to show how the writer escaped that category and became an “I,” a person with a human identity.

Langston Hughes wrote in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926), “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. … We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.” The authorship of “selves” is a central concern. That is why De Kom emphasizes the “We” in We Slaves of Suriname. Taking control of the literary presentation of “our own individual black-colored identity” is more or less the motto of We Slaves.

This understanding of “We” forms a fundamental departure from the “I” of much early African-American literature. De Kom thus emphasizes his conception of solidarity and the distortion of history. This is illustrated by two important passages from We Slaves.

When De Kom returned to Suriname in late December 1932 to visit his gravely ill mother, he stood on the deck of the ship longing for “Sranan, my fatherland,” as he put it, amid the flying fish and “the breath of freedom.” It is no stretch to see this as an allusion to the slave ships and the captivity associated with them. For example, in the best known of the rare literary accounts of the “Middle Passage” (from Africa to the Americas), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa, the African (1789), the enslaved Olaudah Equiano described the flying fish on the deck and the contrast between the fresh air there and the stench in the hold. De Kom goes on to describe his encounter with a white stoker:

High in the stays and shrouds of the Rensselaer blows the wind of freedom. On the deck below me, a stoker emerges – white, but blacker than I am with soot from his fire – and hurries toward his stuffy quarters. Halfway along the forecastle, he waves at me and the children. In the blackness of his face, the whites of his eyes and his pearly teeth are smiling. That too is the same everywhere, and beautiful everywhere: the fellowship among proletarians and their love of liberty. (p. 200)

The stoker and De Kom embody a new “we,” “the same everywhere, and beautiful everywhere,” which champions the love of liberty. In this passage, we witness an unexpected encounter between white and Black: not a sense of alienation from one another, but a look of recognition, a laugh, and a wave. De Kom recognizes the stoker and himself as equals, in spite of all their differences.

These passages in We Slaves deserve literary analysis to uncover new textual meanings. In reading his final chapter purely as autobiography, the reader overlooks De Kom’s added nuances and creative choices.