The writing of the long song
“How can I be proud of my Jamaican roots, when my ancestors had been slaves”? This question asked by a woman with Jamaican roots followed British novelist Andrea Levy for a long time. She wondered how anyone could be ashamed of his or her legacy and thus the foundation of her book, The Long Song, was laid. However, writing the book was a more difficult task than presumed. Levy considered many things at the preliminary stage of the book as she knew that she didn’t want to write yet another historical novel about slavery. This is the reason why she chose to write the “behind the scenes”-essay, The Writing of The Long Song. Herein she elaborates and discusses the process of writing her book and raises important questions that deal with extremely relevant themes such as family pride and the filtering of history.

Levy opens her essay with a flashback to the conference she attended several years earlier in London where the main theme was the legacy of slavery. She remembers a woman asking the panel how she could be proud of her Jamaican roots when her ancestors had been slaves (p. 7, ll. 5-7). Levy doesn’t remember the panel’s answer to the woman but the question stayed with her for a long time and it ended up being her motivation for writing the book The Long Song. Levy is of Jamaican heritage herself and in contrary to the young woman, she proudly acknowledges her slave ancestry: “If our ancestors survived the slave ships they were strong. If they survived the plantations they were clever” (p. 7, ll. 16-19). On the other hand she is able understand the woman’s doubts due to the fact that her own parents also made a great effort to distance themselves from their heritage. “My mum would sooner say her family were slave owners than that they were once slaves” (p. 8, ll. 96-98).

In her novel, Levy draws on a mixture of historical facts