Middle Passage to Freedom: Black Atlantic Consciousness in Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and S. I. Martin's Incomparable World

Authors

Robert Nowatzki

Orginal Publication Date

2003

Journal Title

Ethnic Studies Review

Volume

26

Issue

esr/vol26/iss1

First Page

12

Last Page

28

Comments

Literature: A Special Issue

Abstract

Charles Johnson's novel, Middle Passage, and S.I. Martin's novel, Incomparable World, illustrate through mobile, culturally hybrid protagonists Paul Gilroy's notion of Black Atlantic consciousness, which is based on cultural hybridity and physical mobility across the Atlantic between Europe and Africa, America and the Caribbean. I argue that both novels blur the line between freedom and slavery, between oppressed and oppressor, and disrupt the links between blackness and slavery, between mobility and freedom. In both novels the diasporic Black Atlantic experiences privilege masculinity, since neither novel includes black women who can experience the mobility that the male protagonists do.

Rights

​Copyright ©ESR, The National Association for Ethnic Studies, 2003