![]() 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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