Literary reconstructions of the middle passage in Fred D’Aguiar’s feeding the ghosts

Abstract

This paper focuses on Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts as a literary reconstruction of what happened on the historical Zong slave ship transporting 408 African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean (Middle Passage) in 1781, during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The novel centres on the experiences of an educated black female slave, Mintah, who is thrown overboard along with 122 sick captives but survives to instigate a rebellion. This study reveals that in spite of the atrocities committed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, some female slaves were able to preserve their African identity, and contributed to exposing the horrors of the Middle Passage. By utilising Linda Hutcheon’s notion of historiographic metafiction as a theoretical framework, this study evaluates the importance of reconceptualising the Middle Passage in an effort to contribute renewed perspectives to the discourse on the experiences of African slaves during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Keywords: D’Aguiar, literary reconstruction, Middle Passage, trans-Atlantic slave trade, female slave, historiographic metafiction