Feeding the Ghosts by Fred D'Aguiar

A literary venture into the economic shadow that slavery cast, Feeding the Ghosts, based on a true story, lays bare the raw business of the slave trade. The Zong, a slave ship packed with captive African stock, is headed to the New World. When illness threatens to disable all on board and cut potential profits, the ship's captain orders his crew to throw the sick into the ocean. After being hurled overboard, Mintah, a young female slave taken from a Danish mission, is able to climb back onto the ship. From her hiding place, she rouses the remaining slaves to rebel and stirs unease among the crew with a voice and conscience they seem unable to silence. Mintah's courage and others' reactions to it unfold in a suspenseful story of the struggle to live even when threatened by oblivion. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly In his lyrical third novel, D'Aguiar (Whitbread Award winner for The Longest Memory) fictionalizes a horrifying incident that occurred in 1781. The Zong, a slave ship headed home to England, is packed to capacity with Africans. Shrewd and remote Captain Cunningham considers those 408 people chained below deck to be merely profitable cargo. But his first mate, Kelsal, has more ambivalent feelings about the captives because Africans once saved his life. When illness spreads among the slaves, Cunningham orders the crew to throw the sick overboard so the ship can collect insurance money for the loss. Mintah, an educated African who speaks English and who recognizes Kelsal from her days as one of his caregivers, stuns and frightens the crew with her heroic protests. Beaten and thrown into the sea, she manages to haul herself back onto the ship, where her influence both inspires and divides the remaining slaves. A trial is held upon the ship's arrival to determine liability for the 131 missing slaves. The crew is nearly absolved of responsibility until Mintah's journal is produced, which directly contradicts the crew's accounts. The final words belong to Mintah, whose first-person account of her life after the Zong is troubling and dramatic. D'Aguiar's spare prose starkly reveals the inner lives of Kelsal and Mintah and the crew members as they face the moral weight of this atrocity. D'Aguiar's imagery is haunting, his characters' thoughts complex and the mood darkly compelling. Comparisons to Amistad are inevitable, but D'Aguiar's accounting of the moral wages of the slave trade is a unique work of fiction that stands on its own merits. Agent, Bruce Hunter at David Higham Associates. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Author The Zong was a real slave ship where slaves were tossed overboard due to disease in 1781. D'Aguiar says, I came across an exhibit of a slave ship at The Maritime Museum in Liverpool.... A document at the gallery mentioned the Zong... one of the slaves who was thrown overboard managed to climb back on board. This contradicts the captain's claims that the slaves he threw away were too sick to survive the crossing. This incident, which provided inspiration for Feeding the Ghosts, also inspired a painting by J.M.W. Turner called The Slave Ship. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author D'Aguiar is the author of The Longest Memory and winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews This third novel from Whitbread-winner D'Aguiar, as impressive as its predecessors (Dear Future, 1996; The Longest Memory, 1995), depicts a barbaric deed in historya British slave-ship captain's decision to throw a third of his human cargo overboa rd because theyre sickin all its savagery and sorrow. Profit alone is what drives Captain Cunningham's decision: the slaves are worth more when theyre dead and part of an insurance claim than when theyre sick on the auction block. Although the members of his crew comply, they are reluctant, and only the determination of first mate Kelsal to carry out orders keeps them in line. But when Kelsal is hailed unexpectedly by name from the slave hold, after the first slaves have been cast upon the waters, he disc overs a woman, Mintah, who not only speaks English well but who makes a determined appeal to his sense of humanity. A beating for her trouble fails to silence her, so Kelsal throws her into the ocean, tooalthough she's perfectly healthy. Mintah miraculous ly grabs a rope dangling from the ship and pulls herself back aboard, finding a hiding place among the ship's stores. She reveals herself to the other remaining slaves, and, as the jettisoning of live men, women, and children continues, incites them to re bel. Her rebellion, though short-lived, saps what little energy the crew has left for the job. Rather than face a mutiny led by Kelsal, Cunningham stops the killing. In the end, he gets his precious profit anyway, although he first endures an inquest. Min tah, sold as planned, eventually buys her freedom, and spends her days helping slaves north on the Underground Railroad. The storyline alone would be compelling, but with the lyrical detailing throughout of water and wood, movement and memory, this become s a tale as beautiful in the telling as it is horrific in its reality. -- Copyright ®1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal By turns dreamlike and almost unbearably gritty, D'Aguiar's (Dear Future, LJ 8/96) poignant take on a historic event transports the reader deep into the very timbers of the slave ship Zong, en route from Africa. The ship runs off course, losing several sailors and slaves to disease before its captain makes the shocking decision to throw sick slaves overboard. Disgusted with their orders but either loyal or cowardly, the crew disposes of 131 sick Africans and one bold, articulate young slave woman, Mintah, who dares to object to the proceedings. Remarkably, Mintah survives the sea and climbs back on board the Zong, hiding in food stores and protected by the kind, slow-witted cook's assistant. She becomes the voice of hope and resistance. Upon the Zong's arrival in the Americas, the destruction of stock becomes the subject of a court case in which only Mintah's words consider its true horror. This gripping, horrifying, poetic novel is highly recommended for all libraries.?Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington P.L., Columbus, OH Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Zong dug through the sea, steady and noisy as a rocking chair over loose floorboards, and when the sails thwacked from time to time to a sudden crosswind, everyone on board heard - except those buried deep below deck - an amplified sound like that of perfume being slapped on to a just-shaved face. Captain Cunningham emerged from his cabin and peered at the dawn-lit sky and his assembled crew with the squint he reserved for reading. Whatever he saw in the bunched men and thick grey clouds speckled blue, drew the frown he ordinarily deployed against untidy writing or unrealistic instructions from an investor. He used his right hand to stroke the left side of his face, partly to clarify his thinking and partly to enjoy the smoothness of a recent shave. His middle finger settled on the dimple in his chin that was always so difficult to defoliate and searched it. How to begin? he wondered. With a deep breath mostly of salt spray air and a wisp of the perfume on his face he answered himself, 'At the beginning, of course.' He acknowledged the smiling face of his first mate, Kelsal, with a sharp nod. Kelsal's smile switched to a pursed-lipped stare, his more familiar demeanour. All swayed in unison, like a church choir, in opposition to the steady locomotion of the ship. More than the wind in the sails and the sea against the sides or the strain in the ship's timbers plummeting through water were the just audible cries emanating from below decks. But neither the captain nor the assembled crew seemed to hear them, or perhaps, like the sea, the ship and the sails, these cries had grown so habitual to the sailors' ears, they were no longer heard as signals of distress, but as part of the whole, all-encompassing fabric of routine. Captain Cunningham planted his knuckles in his hips. As if spurred by the action, he immediately raised his chest and shoulders, jutted his chin forward so that he was at his full height, sucked a generous portion of air akin to a shot of rum bolted down to give backbone to some otherwise tenuous resolve, and began. 'Gentlemen, we have a complication of such potentially disastrous consequences for our investments that the solution requires of us all a degree of brass courage.' Several nods and hear, hears, in agreement, pleased him. A few quizzical looks from the lesser hands, he could afford to ignore, so he resumed. 'We have surrendered seven good men to these waters and lost thirty-six of our holdings. I do not intend to bury another. One-twelfth of our holdings lost! With each loss our commission dwindles. These three months of hard work, sacrifice and suffering will come to nothing. We must act decisively or return to our families and friends and investors empty-handed. Which is it to be, gentlemen?' Captain Cunningham paused. He expected to hear unanimous calls of 'Profit! Profit!' Instead, he faced confused expressions and indecipherable grumbles. The men seemed to think he had posed the question, not for an answer from them, but to himself as part of a larger elucidation that was bound to follow his long pause. The captain fought back an impulse to shout, 'Which is it to be, gentlemen?' at them again. They watched him with varying degrees of concentration etched on their faces. Some shrugged. He pressed his knuckles deeper into his hips to avoid punching the face of the nearest sailor and thereby knocking some common sense into the visage or at least dislodging the mask of attentiveness and revealing the stupidity that languished underneath. What he summoned was the patience he needed in massive reserves to deal with sailors and slaves. 'Are we to make a loss or a profit? Which is it to be, gentlemen?' This time the appropriate cries of 'Profit! Profit!' were elicited from them. He waited for the discussion that erupted to subside. First Mate Kelsal shushed at a few of the more talkative men nearby, which had the desired effect of returning the focus to the captain. Kelsal's permanent pleat of skin between his eyebrows, coupled with his pursed lips, conferred on him the unusual aspect of someone who was always listening intently. Looking at him there would be no way of telling he was unsure where the captain's mind and obvious resolve would lead them next. Wherever it led he knew he would have to follow, as he had always followed, since every reasonable path was preferred to this stagnation of death and disease which had gripped the Zong and brought it to the brink of failure and anchored it there for weeks, in this, its last African mission. Ten weeks at sea and the prospect of the horizon yielding up the land that they believed was there, of land alongside instead of perennial sea, was still a dream. First the slaves became sick. This was expected. But with each death and no end in sight, fear spread among the twenty-four members of the crew that their turn would come. The ship's doctor had succumbed, panic spread. He died. One after another the crew fell in with the vomiting and diarrhoea of the slaves, robbing the ship of hands that were vitally needed and the remaining crew of its will, souring the mission's hitherto delicious promise of wealth for all involved. 'The insurers' interests are at odds with ours. That you know. What you don't know is that every time a piece of cargo is lost we, not the insurers, must bear that loss, unless the loss is a measure taken by us to ensure against further depletion of our stocks. What I am about to propose, gentlemen, is one such measure that we may recover our losses from the insurance.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review Out of this monstrous episode in a monstrous trade, D'Aguiar has fashioned a novel of great power and beauty.... The writing is luminous and poetic. --Sunday Times (London) The most satisfying aspects of the story are D'Aguiar's precise observations of the resonances of languages and its capacity to transform what it describes. --Times Literary Supplement His eloquence in full flight, D'Aguiar implies that there is always a Zong at sea somewhere. --Saturday Independent --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.