JAMAICA REVISITED: SLAVE NARRATIVE IN ANDREA LEVY'S THE LONG SONG

"Me be a mulatto, not a negro," claims July, the protagonist of The Long Song (2010, 198). With this novel, acclaimed British novelist Andrea Levy pays tribute to her ancestors who lived as slaves on the sugar plantations in Jamaica. Against the backdrop of the black Baptist War that erupted in Jamaica in 1831, the 1838 abolition of slavery in the British Empire and its aftermath are discussed. Although the tradition of slave narratives is often associated with American literary and social history, Levy creates a neo-slave narrative that focuses on the issue of identity within the Caribbean. She explores the ethnic background of the individual characters in order to question the social hierarchy within the British Empire.