Middle Passage

I have rarely heard a narrator's voice so well-suited to a character as is Dion Graham's voice is to Rutherford Calhoun. The entire book is written in first person as a personal journal of a ne'er-do-well former slave from Illinois who lives in New Orleans in 1830. Calhoun stows away on a ship that he discovers is a slave ship bound for West Africa. It is captained by an American explorer and adventurer with a strong personality and an insatiable desire for new experiences. Along the way, Calhoun discovers that the slaves and the cargo in the hold are not normal, in fact they might be more accurately described as paranormal. I would say more but I want to avoid spoilers. In reality, this book is not a good piece of historical fiction - historical anachronisms abound. Rather, it is an exceptional piece of fiction full of good old-fashioned literary themes, adventure, personal growth and literary allusions, including the obvious ones such as Moby Dick and Homer's Odyssey. One of the larger themes is freedom and servitude. Most obviously there are the slaves, but Charles Johnson also explores the debts we owe one another, society in gneral, employer/employee, men and women, parent and child, god and man and the way our past binds us to our future. Looked at in all of these contexts, the reader may wonder if any of us are really free? The closest "new" book that I've read is The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti, but it doesn't come close. I highly recommend this book, especially the audio version Middle Passage, since it so perfectly narrated.

An amalgamate of several genres, "Middle Passage" stands on its own as a different perspective on exploring the slave trade. Traveling opposite the traditional direction of the voyage, the protagonist Rutherford Calhoun starts from America and crosses the Atlantic to Africa aboard a slave ship. The book reads easily; Johnson performed an excellent job of historical research while still writing an entertaining book that owes a lot to its well-developed narrator. A petty thief, product of a liberal education, drunkard, and overall real human being, Calhoun will charm many readers to his side. Much of the humor in the presence of such human tragedy allows the novel to be more accessible to more people who might read it as a tale of adventure. While off-putting to some, the profuse philosophy and philosophical discussion encourage critical thinking about the Middle Passage, its motivations, and its effects.

This book was mandatory for my African American Literature course and I am glad that it was. It is impossible for anyone to imagine today what it would have been like for Africans to be taken from the comfort of their homes to be slaves in America. The only thing we could compare it to is being abducted by aliens if you really think about it. They were overtaken by people who looked very different than they did and who spoke an unknown language. They were put into giant ships of the likes they had never seen and many times, they were branded and always chained below decks. Many thought they were being taken to a foreign land to be eaten and often times the slavers would put slaves in groups with different tribes so that they could not communicate or comfort eachother due to a language barrier. They knew nothing of the world around them as people do today. The concept is, in truth, almost impossible to imagine.Johnson studied about Middle Passage for something like seventeen years before writing this book, not to mention another six years studying maritime science. To be sure, there are a lot of fantastical occurrences within the book but that is why it is called fiction. I believe he does a phenomenal job with the character of Rutherford Calhoun...he's a liar, gambler, womanizer, and thief but there is something about him that puts the reader on his side. You will find yourself rooting for him all the way through the book.The novel itself is indeed very graphic in description and includes things such as cannibalism so, if you have a weak stomach, BEWARE. The best things about this novel are its extremely dark humor,its fast pace, and its irony. As an avid reader, there is nothing I appreciate more than someone who can take a horrific experience and make it simultaneously poignant and funny. Not only is this a way of putting a face on the early days of slavery but it is a highly entertaining piece of fiction. I would recommend it to anyone looking for adventure on the high seas!

Charles Johnson's The Middle Passage is a brilliant book. Period. On the surface it is an oceanic adventure story in the high tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Herman Melville and it certainly lives up to those illustrious forbearers. But there is so much more than that involved.The book is also a rumination on race and the black experience, and an examination of what it means to be an African American in the modern age. Johnson accomplishes this in a work of historical fiction so artfully though that it never falls into the trap of heavy moralization that such themes are prone to.But even beyond that are the intertwined threads of Hegelian philosophy, Phenomenology, Buddhist epistemology, and manages to make a coherent philosophical argument without ever dealing overtly with the problems of philosophy.And then there are the Allmuseri. Johnson's fictional African Tribe is wondrous and a sign of a superlative imagination that stripped of the trappings of postmodern literature would be a joy in and of itself. I'm currently in the process of forcing all of my friends to read this book, and it has quickly become one of my favorites. I really don't see how anyone who truly enjoys great literature could fail to fall in love with this book.

This is a terrific novel, crackling with ideas and disturbing images (sometimes disturbing because they're funny when we don't expect humor). In regard to the anachronisms: in addition to what everyone has written, I found an anti-affirmative action rant, an ex-slave referring to fears about having to pay a mortgage, and references to celebrity-worship. But -- HELLO! -- has anyone considered that these are intentional? Of course we expect a more literal realism, but I think it's part of Johnson's point that we can't just reconstruct the past as if we weren't experiencing the present. All those "anachronisms," then, are just little reminders of where Johnson stands in relation to his story and invitations to readers to draw connections with our own worlds.