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Slave Song
Songs of frustration and defiance from African slaves and displaced Indian laborers are expressed in a harsh and lyrical Guyanese Creole far removed from contemporary English in these provocative Caribbean poems. An insightful critical apparatus of English translations surrounds these lyrics, shedding light on their meaning, while at the same time cleverly commenting on the impossibility of translating Creole and parodying critical attempts to explain and contextualize Caribbean poetry. Twenty years after the initial release of this work, the power of these poems and the self-fashioned critique that accompanies them remain a lively and vital part of Caribbean literature.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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53 people want to read
About the author
David Dabydeen
35 books25 followersDavid Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China.
Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on" (1840).
His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004.
Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.
In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.
In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora.
(from Wikipedia)
Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on" (1840).
His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004.
Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.
In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.
In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2025
Slave Song by David Dabydeen is something else. It is a collection of 14 poems written in the voices of African enslaved and indentured Indian labourers. It is powerful and raw.
Dabydeen's choice to write in Guyanese creole gives it another layer which I quite enjoyed. He quite simply states, "English fails where the Creole succeeds." He wanted to retain the "full vulgarity of the language" to show the profound element in Guyanese life.
In his introduction, Daybdeen talks about his exploration for "our [Caribbean / POC] desire for whiteness." He plays on exploring how the 'savage' (from European perspective) yearns for civilisation. Much of the work explores sensualness and sexual experience, albeit in somewhat disturbing ways. There are poems that look at the white desire for the black body, and then there are poems that look at the black desire for white body.
Each piece dives into a dynamic that Dabydeen breaks down in latter-half of the book. Dabydeen's work is partly a critique on how writers that exist in the Western culture write like Westerners. But MOST importantly it is a look at how colonial exploitation deforms the lives of the colonized. As I have been thinking about 'the body' a lot in my work; reading the different versions of eroticism each viewpoint had me pondering about a lot of things. My body was cold, tears pricked my eyes, I laughed, but most importantly I thought a lot while reading this work. Who knew 14 poems had that power?
I highly recommend this work, which quite clearly stands the test of time as it's over 40 years old now.
Dabydeen's choice to write in Guyanese creole gives it another layer which I quite enjoyed. He quite simply states, "English fails where the Creole succeeds." He wanted to retain the "full vulgarity of the language" to show the profound element in Guyanese life.
In his introduction, Daybdeen talks about his exploration for "our [Caribbean / POC] desire for whiteness." He plays on exploring how the 'savage' (from European perspective) yearns for civilisation. Much of the work explores sensualness and sexual experience, albeit in somewhat disturbing ways. There are poems that look at the white desire for the black body, and then there are poems that look at the black desire for white body.
Each piece dives into a dynamic that Dabydeen breaks down in latter-half of the book. Dabydeen's work is partly a critique on how writers that exist in the Western culture write like Westerners. But MOST importantly it is a look at how colonial exploitation deforms the lives of the colonized. As I have been thinking about 'the body' a lot in my work; reading the different versions of eroticism each viewpoint had me pondering about a lot of things. My body was cold, tears pricked my eyes, I laughed, but most importantly I thought a lot while reading this work. Who knew 14 poems had that power?
I highly recommend this work, which quite clearly stands the test of time as it's over 40 years old now.
October 18, 2020
A book of astonishing beauty and power and subtlety. Can you think of another book that has only 14 poems in it, yet makes such an impact, announces the arrival of such a talent? This is how David Dabydeen burst upon the literary world, not yet 30, with this collection of earthy creole songs that smell and taste of damp soil and tropic heat, the canefields of his native Guyana and its endless allotments of blood, grief and sorrow. Only 14 poems, as I said, each supported by Dabydeen's own commentary and mock-critical paraphernalia - but it is the poems, above all else the poems that are such a revelation for the reader.
How to take a language that was misshapen and malformed, literally torn out of the bloody mouths of a people forced to cross two oceans and resettle at the far end of the world, their original tongue lost and forgotten, their forefathers' customs and traditions barely clinging on, how to take that broken and inarticulate Creole and make soft music and poetry out of it, make high literature out of it, is the measure of Dabydeen's achievement.
There's humour and there's regret in these poems, there's passion and there's wistfulness too, but but the overriding tenor, if there is one, is one of undeniable violence, of lives deformed and destroyed by a peculiarly brutal form of colonial exploitation. Over and over, this brutality and deformity returns in poems like "Song of the Creole Gang Women", in the rape and death of young Indian girls in "Guyana Pastoral" and "For Mala", in the violent rape fantasies of "Canecutters' Song" and "Nightmare" and the proudly defiant "Slave Song". That insistent fantasy of lying down with the Mistress of the plantation, the unfathomably remote and absurdly idealized white woman, comes across as the desire not only to elevate and sublimate one's miserable existence through an impossible wish fulfilment, it can also be read as an urgent demand for equality, to be seen and understood and taken as a man, a human being.
For me, it is mostly the rest of this collection that is the charm. The riotous humour of "The Servants' Song", dragging Missie's gold ring straight out of a duck's ass. The sadness and regret of old age in "Elegy" and "Men and Women". The experience of migration in "Brown Skin Girl" and "Two Cultures". The evocation of a dark and throbbing and maddeningly fecund nature all about: crappau frog and cush-cush ant, kiskadee bird and camoudie snake, and much much more.
And then there are the best of the best, among them the already mentioned "Men and Women":
"So me saary.
Bu when yu grow old an yu voice weak an yu mout dribble
An yu foot-battam crack,
Is too late
Foh seh saary.
Bu me still saary."
The incredible achievement of "Slavewoman's Song", which somehow in a mere 20 lines gives voice to the tragedy of millions of black women spanning four centuries. The brilliant rap of a bright village morning in "For Ma". And then finally, last but far far from the least, the stunning Creole lyricism of "Love Song", easily among the most beautiful poems I've read in my life... to read it is to live..
*
A landmark then in postcolonial literature, IMHO. Creole was borne out of imperial violence and oppression, a bastard language that became the only possible expression of a terrible, unimaginable, unforgivable reality. To do what Dabydeen does with that tongue in this book is nothing short of a linguistic and imaginative miracle. With two short collections, he has shot up in my list of favorite writers, his work as integral to Caribbean literature, as essential to a full understanding of the Caribbean experience as that of Walcott himself.
How to take a language that was misshapen and malformed, literally torn out of the bloody mouths of a people forced to cross two oceans and resettle at the far end of the world, their original tongue lost and forgotten, their forefathers' customs and traditions barely clinging on, how to take that broken and inarticulate Creole and make soft music and poetry out of it, make high literature out of it, is the measure of Dabydeen's achievement.
There's humour and there's regret in these poems, there's passion and there's wistfulness too, but but the overriding tenor, if there is one, is one of undeniable violence, of lives deformed and destroyed by a peculiarly brutal form of colonial exploitation. Over and over, this brutality and deformity returns in poems like "Song of the Creole Gang Women", in the rape and death of young Indian girls in "Guyana Pastoral" and "For Mala", in the violent rape fantasies of "Canecutters' Song" and "Nightmare" and the proudly defiant "Slave Song". That insistent fantasy of lying down with the Mistress of the plantation, the unfathomably remote and absurdly idealized white woman, comes across as the desire not only to elevate and sublimate one's miserable existence through an impossible wish fulfilment, it can also be read as an urgent demand for equality, to be seen and understood and taken as a man, a human being.
For me, it is mostly the rest of this collection that is the charm. The riotous humour of "The Servants' Song", dragging Missie's gold ring straight out of a duck's ass. The sadness and regret of old age in "Elegy" and "Men and Women". The experience of migration in "Brown Skin Girl" and "Two Cultures". The evocation of a dark and throbbing and maddeningly fecund nature all about: crappau frog and cush-cush ant, kiskadee bird and camoudie snake, and much much more.
And then there are the best of the best, among them the already mentioned "Men and Women":
"So me saary.
Bu when yu grow old an yu voice weak an yu mout dribble
An yu foot-battam crack,
Is too late
Foh seh saary.
Bu me still saary."
The incredible achievement of "Slavewoman's Song", which somehow in a mere 20 lines gives voice to the tragedy of millions of black women spanning four centuries. The brilliant rap of a bright village morning in "For Ma". And then finally, last but far far from the least, the stunning Creole lyricism of "Love Song", easily among the most beautiful poems I've read in my life... to read it is to live..
*
A landmark then in postcolonial literature, IMHO. Creole was borne out of imperial violence and oppression, a bastard language that became the only possible expression of a terrible, unimaginable, unforgivable reality. To do what Dabydeen does with that tongue in this book is nothing short of a linguistic and imaginative miracle. With two short collections, he has shot up in my list of favorite writers, his work as integral to Caribbean literature, as essential to a full understanding of the Caribbean experience as that of Walcott himself.
September 4, 2022
Day 25 of the Sealey Challenge. This was a hard read in several places but worth it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews