Irony of ‘Mercy’
By Dave
October 29th, 2008 | Leave a comment
Toni Morrison travels back in time, more than 300 years, to explore the devastating inhumanity of slavery. Her new book, A Mercy, is not so much about race as it is the human condition. In an interview with NPR, Morrison points out that black people were not the only slaves in early America or elsewhere in the world.
“Every civilization in the world relied on [slavery],” says Morrison. “The notion was that there was a difference between black slaves and white slaves, but there wasn’t.”
White slaves, called indentured servants, were people who traded their freedom for their passage to America.
“The suggestion has always been that they could work off their passage in seven years generally, and then they would be free,” says Morrison. “But in fact, you could be indentured for life and frequently were. The only difference between African slaves and European or British slaves was that the latter could run away and melt into the population. But if you were black, you were noticeable.”
NPR continues:
“The stories in A Mercy are as layered and contested as the barely mapped topology traversed by its characters. Set in the 1680s, when this country’s reliance on slavery as an economic engine was just beginning, A Mercy explores the repercussions of an enslaved mother’s desperate act: She offers her small daughter to a stranger in payment for her master’s debt.”
To watch the interview, CLICK HERE.
To visit the NPR page, CLICK HERE.
