![]() Physical, as in it buries itself in the natural world, offering robust detail in the description of even the most microscopic of organisms. Slave Old Man is an incredibly physical novel. RELATED: Reflecting on GayL Jones’ ‘CoRregidora’ and its excavation of transgenerational traumas on the bod ![]() The l’esclave vieil homme, or “the slave old man” as he is referred to for much of his odyssey, while a vessel for remembering the trailing of maroons-fugitive Black slaves who escaped into the mountains of Jamaica-is Chamoiseau asking the reader, what are the memories of that which remains, both of body and ground? And in the story of this old man, Chamoiseau-more the bones he gives space to speak-offer an entryway into understanding the historical imagination as an archeological tool and a matter more of record than speculation, when translating the evidence of the unseen. And a broken tibia…” Those bones, as are revealed to us, do-and don’t-belong to the novel’s protagonist, Old Syrup. The final words of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man read, “Brother, I shouldn’t have, but I touched those bones.” Those bones being, “The clavicles. ![]() This essay contains spoilers for Patrick Chamoiseau’s 1997 novel, Slave Old Man ![]()
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