(Leaving) Black Shack Alley

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. The book for this week is Black Sheep Alley by Joseph Zobel. The book tells the coming-of-age tale of the author José, a young boy growing up on the island of Martinique, an overseas region of france and former colony. I really enjoyed the read, and found it to be very emotionally moving, especially knowing the story was based on real events. I also felt it touched on many important social topics such as the power of education, racial injustice, the cycle of poverty, and family sacrifice.

The first part of the book takes place in Black Shack Alley, a strip of ramshackle huts built on a sugar cane plantation, where José lives with his grandmother, M’man Tine. On most days the adults go off to work on the plantation and José and his friends are left alone in the alley with complete freedom. The children’s carefree existence and innocence at this time is in stark contrast to the harsh realities of the work on the plantation, where the adults sacrifice their bodies each day to earn paltry wages. In their naivety, they look at adult life on the plantation with a sense of curiosity, rather than the dread that it perhaps deserves. Plantation life is all the children have known so it just seems normal to them at the time, but as José grows up and later moves off of the plantation, he becomes increasingly aware of the brutal nature of his grandmother’s work.

José’s relationship with his grandmother was a very inspiring part of this book for me. In the absence of his true mother who is away working in another town, M’man Tine serves as a stern yet loving mother figure in José’s life. Despite the trouble he causes her, she is devoted to getting him away from the plantation so that he can receive an education. She sees education as a form of liberation, and as a way out of the cycle of poverty that the workers of the plantation are trapped in. Throughout the later years of her life, M’man Tine sacrifices everything, including her own health in order to give José the opportunity to live a better life. Sadly, José is not able to pay her back while she is alive, as she dies while he is still in school, but this book that he wrote serves as a tribute to her life.

Discussion question: How did knowing the book was based on the Author’s own life affect your experience reading it?