Zong!

Book

Zong! / M. NourbeSe Philip ; as told to the author by Setaey Adamu Boateng.

Philip, Marlene Nourbese, 1947- (Author). Boateng, Setaey Adamu. (Added Author).

Summary:

In November, 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered that some 150 Africans be murdered by drowning so that the ship's owners could collect insurance monies. Relying entirely on the words of the legal decision Gregson v. Gilbert the only extant public document related to the massacre of these African slaves Zong! tells the story that cannot be told yet must be told. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant, Zong! excavates the legal text. Memory, history, and law collide and metamorphose into the poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition, Zong! becomes an anti-narrative lament that stretches the boundaries of the poetic form, haunting the spaces of forgetting and mourning the forgotten. -- Back cover.

Record details

ISBN: 0819571695
ISBN: 9780819571694
Physical Description: xii, 211 p. ; 24 cm.
Edition: 1st Wesleyan pbk. ed.
Publisher: Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, 2011, c2008.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (p. 208-209).
Formatted Contents Note:: Os --- Sal --- Ventus --- Ratio --- Ferrum --- Ebora --- Glossary: Words and Phrases Heard on Board the Zong --- Manifest --- Notanda --- Gregson v. Gilbert.