Such a constant game with truth and secrets is illustrated on various levels in Andrea Levy’s 2010 novel The Long Song.įrom General Introduction to Special Issue: 'Rounding out the scholarly contributions, Sarah Lawson Welsh’s work contributes to the growing body of research concerning the culture(s) of food and taste in postcolonial and Caribbean studies. Lies and secrets were also slaves’ hidden ways to cheat on their masters and to retrieve some form of control upon their lives. As a consequence, truth itself became a blurred concept in the West Indies, as masters and slaves had sometimes no choice but to lie in order to survive, be it literally or metaphorically. Both masters and slaves used omissions and secrets to different effects. Under slavery – and still today in some locations − race and social status were deeply linked, thus preventing any form of social improvement and the hierarchy between masters and slaves was well-established. During the long timespan in which human beings could own and exploit others, many specific ideas, ideologies and social structures arose and got enforced, the most important of all being racism. Stretching over three and a half centuries, slavery in the Caribbean was initially an economically-triggered form of human exploitation, which also gradually gave rise to an entire social system.
In the context of slavery, opinions and perceptions of events can be utterly opposite from one person to the other, since the system implies an absolute distinction between masters and slaves.
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