Zobel’s Black Shack Alley is a fascinating look into the impacts of colonialism throughout childhood in Martinique, and the racialization and trauma that comes with it. It seemed to me while I read that José did not frequently dwell on and confront notions of race, but it was clear that race and struggles with identity pervaded much of the novel, so I wanted to talk about the “unsaid” aspects of José’s narration, and how they shed light on issues of race, identity, and injustice in Martinique.

In addition to the events he describes, like M’man Tine and Médouze slowly working themselves to death in the sugar cane fields to watching the white lycée students buy cakes at lunch, José reveals much about his worldview in the words he chooses to express his experiences. I noticed that colour and contrasts between white and black are subconsciously included in many of José’s descriptions. For example, a chalk on a blackboard is likened to whiteness on blackness, or whites “standing on” and relying on black labour, and when he imagines M’man Tine’s death, he sees her black hands hard from years of work lying on white sheets, as though living in the “whitened” world of colonial Martinique caused her that pain. José grows up in a racialized environment, in which the békés, or whites, enjoy a position of privilege over the blacks, who in his experience take up hard plantation work or become servants. Many of his perceptions revolve around a conflict between white and black.

José is also relatively young for most of the novel, and he has trouble adequately expressing his dissatisfcation with the injustices of racism and colonialism, especially because white people, as opposed to “the békés,” as a whole, are rarely highlighted. At a young age, he expresses this feeling through a desire to be violent, writing that he had a “desire” to hit a béké, but as he grows up, there seems to be some pent-up anguish and anger over M’man Tine’s working conditions and his unequal opportunities. This reminded me a bit of Nada last week, where Andrea had to navigate war’s anguish and trauma that no one could articulate, and face her reality of living in poverty compared to many of her friends.

Finally, just as how the lecture mentions that the French language seems to fail to properly describe or represent postcolonial society, José, though later literate and “learned,” sees his life as not entirely worthy of communicating. He wishes at some point to be able to write brilliant novels after becoming captivated by the power of the books he reads, but does not see black stories, and began to believe that they were not worth telling, even as he tells his story. The narration in Black Shack Alley provides powerful insight into colonial experiences, but I think there’s a lot more to explore, so my question is “How does José’s narration show how French colonialism has impacted his worldview throughout his childhood?”