This difficult and provocative book is a conversation sparker. A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual. Evaristo’s novel is a powerful, thoughtful reminder that diabolical behavior can take place in any culture, “safety” is an illusion and freedom is something easily taken for granted. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the society of today. In an effort to embody the collection’s moody version of spring, Jenner completely changed her look, trading her inky-black hair for icy blonde locks with dark roots and bleaching her eyebrows.
In a less skilled writer’s hands, the premise easily could have worn itself out by the second chapter, but Evaristo’s intellectually rigorous narrative constantly surprises, and, for all the barbarism on display, it’s strikingly human. The narrative cuts back and forth through time, contrasting the journey to freedom with the journey toward slavery. After she’s kidnapped by slavers, she experiences the horror and inhumanity of slave transport, is sold and works her way back to freedom. British novelist Evaristo delivers an astonishing, uncomfortable and beautiful alternative history that goes back several centuries to flip the slave trade, with “Aphrikans” enslaving the people of “Europa” and exporting many of them to “Amarika.” The plot revolves around Doris, the daughter of a long line of proud cabbage farmers who live in serfdom.
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