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| omnipoetics:zong [2025/04/23 12:42] – [Visuals & Organization] holly | omnipoetics:zong [2025/04/23 23:53] (current) – [Historical Background] holly |
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| __Additional Facts from the London Museum Webpage:__ | __Additional Facts from the London Museum Webpage__ |
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| * "None of the murderers were ever prosecuted." ((London Museum, “Did the Zong Massacre help end slavery?" https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/zong-massacre-trial/, para. 2)) | * "None of the murderers were ever prosecuted." ((London Museum, “Did the Zong Massacre help end slavery?" https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/zong-massacre-trial/, para. 2)) |
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| While Philip wrote with intentionality, at least one choice regarding the layout was a result of a random technology issue as Philip's printer malfunctioned, and "the first two or three pages [were] superimposed on each other." ((Philip //Zong!// Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 206)) | While Philip wrote with intentionality, at least one choice regarding the layout was a result of a random technology issue as Philip's printer malfunctioned, and "the first two or three pages [were] superimposed on each other." ((Philip //Zong!// Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 206)) |
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| | __The Position of the Names__ |
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| | The names listed in “Zong! #14” and “Zong! #15” are smaller than the main text and positioned similar to the way footnotes are in Word documents. Eva C. Karpinski comments on this arrangement in the article, “Moving the Bones: Multilingual Plasticity in Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s //Zong!//” to suggest that the “Yoruba names emerge in the liminal space of the margin, in the footnotes, visually ‘floating’ under the water or below the deck of the ship” ((Karpinski, Eva C. “Moving the Bones: Multilingual Plasticity in Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 45, no. 4, 2018, p. 640)) |
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| __Word Choice __ | __Word Choice __ |
| There are moments in //Zong!// wherein the words might not make sense, or the author's intention behind the use of certain words is unclear. According to Philip, “Clusters of words sometimes have meaning, often do not — words are broken into and open to make non-sense or no sense at all, which, in turn, becomes a code for another submerged meaning. Words break into sound, return to their initial and originary phonic sound — grunts, plosives, labials" ((Philip //Zong!//Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 205)) Philip concludes this train of thought, asking "— is this, perhaps, how language might have sounded at the beginning of time?” ((Philip //Zong!// Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 205)) | There are moments in //Zong!// wherein the words might not make sense, or the author's intention behind the use of certain words is unclear. According to Philip, “Clusters of words sometimes have meaning, often do not — words are broken into and open to make non-sense or no sense at all, which, in turn, becomes a code for another submerged meaning. Words break into sound, return to their initial and originary phonic sound — grunts, plosives, labials" ((Philip //Zong!//Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 205)) Philip concludes this train of thought, asking "— is this, perhaps, how language might have sounded at the beginning of time?” ((Philip //Zong!// Wesleyan University Press, 2008. p. 205)) |
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| __The Position of the Names__ | |
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| The names listed in “Zong! #14” and “Zong! #15” are smaller than the main text and positioned similar to the way footnotes are in Word documents. Eva C. Karpinski comments on this arrangement in the article, “Moving the Bones: Multilingual Plasticity in Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s //Zong!//” to suggest that the “Yoruba names emerge in the liminal space of the margin, in the footnotes, visually ‘floating’ under the water or below the deck of the ship” ((Karpinski, Eva C. “Moving the Bones: Multilingual Plasticity in Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 45, no. 4, 2018, p. 640)) | |
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| ===== Themes ===== | ===== Themes ===== |
| __Resistance__ | __Resistance__ |
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| One of the strongest themes in Zong! #14 and Zong! #15 is resistance. M. NourbeSe Philip uses poetry to fight back against how enslaved people were treated—as objects, not as human beings. By using phrases like “the subject in property” and “ratio of murder,” she shows how the legal system tried to hide violence using cold, technical words. The way the poem is written—scattered, broken, and full of space—is also a form of resistance. It doesn’t follow the usual rules of writing or storytelling. That is on purpose. Philip refuses to tell the story the way history books or legal papers do. She creates her own language of resistance to show pain, injustice, and protest. | One of the strongest themes in Zong! #14 and Zong! #15 is resistance. M. NourbeSe Philip uses poetry to fight back against how enslaved people were treated—as objects, not as human beings. By using phrases like “the subject in property” and “ratio of murder,” she shows how the legal system tried to hide violence using cold, technical words. The way the poem is written—scattered, broken, and full of space—is also a form of resistance. It doesn’t follow the usual rules of writing or storytelling. That is on purpose. Philip refuses to tell the story the way history books or legal papers do. She creates her own language of resistance to show pain, injustice, and protest. Philip refuses to tell the story in the way that history books or court records might. Instead, she writes outside those systems, creating a poetic language that exposes injustice and protests the silence that followed. |
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| __Memory and Forgetting__ | __Memory and Forgetting__ |
| https://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/reviews/zong-transformation-language-sacred-space | https://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/reviews/zong-transformation-language-sacred-space |
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| | Philip, M. N. (2021, October 11). Outline of Events Related to the Unauthorized Translation of Zong! as told by the author Setaey Adamu Boateng by Renata Morresi and Benway Series Press. Retrieved from https://www.nourbese.com/2021/10/11/ |
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| For those who want to know more about Antônio de Castro Alves: | For those who want to know more about Antônio de Castro Alves: |
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| Castro Alves from Brazil is a poem written by Paulo Neruda, imagining a dialogue between both poets. See [[https://allpoetry.com/Castro-Alves-From-Brazil|here]] | Castro Alves from Brazil is a poem written by Paulo Neruda, imagining a dialogue between both poets. See [[https://allpoetry.com/Castro-Alves-From-Brazil|here]] |
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| | {{tag>[oral poem]}} |
