Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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Another impressive characteristic that can be drawn from the book is the multiple opinions and arguments that these Black people offer. We can listen to a polyphony of voices that see slavery, racism, and discrimination from heterogeneous points of view: some feel resentful against their masters while some others are grateful to them; some wish to remain in Canada and some want to get back to the U.S. when slavery is abolished; some praise the Canadian benevolence whilst some denounce its racist practices and protest against the suspicions they arise. Yet, the most important thing, and the most interesting one, is that Drew lets them speak their minds, have their say, and in this way, we get to learn their own, and highly diverse, points of view. This is what probably gives entity to the book and serves as an underlying characteristic that allows for a redefinition of the slave narrative as a genre.

In truth, the definition of the book has stirred some problems since its polyphonic nature and the multiplicity of opinions it contains has made it difficult to determine it in literary terms. Those who have mentioned the collection’s problems with authenticity link it though, albeit indirectly, to the slave narrative tradition. Winfried Siemerling considers that “[l]ike most transcribers of slave narratives, Drew sought to maximize the impression of authenticity conveyed by his ethnographic transpositions from orality to writing” (122), but this does not necessarily mean that he refuses to acknowledge the book’s unquestionable importance. In fact, he defends that, regardless of the legitimate criticism, the collection “not only was a systematic portrayal of the black settlements and especially the conditions of the black population in Canada West, but also offered the most extensive anthology that we possess of slave narratives recorded in Canada” (Siemerling 123). For his part, George Elliott Clarke argues in the same direction and ponders that refusing to consider these types of narratives as Canadian slave narratives implies accepting that “no ex-slaves anywhere outside African America ever scribed their predicament,” and accepting this, when the history of Black Canada has been ripped open “is insupportable” (11). Besides, Clarkes also notes, these testimonies represent a vivid example of Canadian slave narratives since Drew himself refers to them as “coloured Canadians” which demonstrates that, “as much as fugitive slaves (and free blacks) were counted as African Americans as they fled across the Niagara frontier or the Great Lakes and into British North America, they were Canadians when they agreed to speak to Drew” (Clarke, “Introduction” 11). In this way, Drew’s A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada adheres to the genre of the slave narrative but offering not an isolated view, but a plethora of voices.