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The New Historical Adventure Novel, Hinterland and the Author
By De Geo - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=182181985
by Faith P. Nelson • February 2024
(Written in 2023 and revised in 2024; first published here in 2026)
The Long-Drawn Staging For Jamaican Independence
On the eve of Jamaica’s independence celebration in 2023, author Dawn Forrester Price launched her second novel, Run to Freedom: Hinterland.
The novel is about enslaved Africans’ early fight for freedom, which sets the stage for independence. The story chronicles an 18th Century hit-and-run rebel campaign that wound through Jamaica’s dense and lush Cockpit Country and awakens the bush-bush of our forgetfulness. Its protagonists, Prudence and Kofi, are young siblings and runaways struggling to come to terms with their new life in Maroon country. And the adjustment is a rough one.
Not only is the novel concerned with Maroon sovereignty, freedom and autonomy, it focuses keenly on Prudence’s re-education, which is vital to the community’s future.
The Author
The Author
In this story world, and at this point in Jamaica’s history, slavery is a long way from being abolished. The Maroons are a hyper-vigilant near nomadic collective, who understand the importance of keeping their African heritage alive, as well as the need to groom soldiers, and protect their freedom from the blood-thirsty British and treacherous slave trackers working for them.
Hinterland introduces and refreshes our memory of these long-ago events. Even more important, Dawn Forrester Price’s skillful retelling and the choices she makes using a young hero and heroine, submerges us, helps us savor the experience, drops us into the action and offers us a whole new perspective of the environment at that time. The author, in this lush and human retelling of a harsh and brutal period in Jamaican history, is functioning as a griot.
The Forced Transformation of the Traditional Griot
Who is the traditional griot, and what is his or her role? The griot, in African culture, is the oral historian and storyteller for the village and community. He or she is responsible for preserving, protecting, and passing down that particular culture’s heroic stories, cautionary tales, traditions, proverbs and collected wisdom to the next generation. Those stories are often performed to music.
In the preface of Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, author D. T. Niane opines about the griot:
In the very hierarchical society of Africa before colonization, where everyone found his place, the griot appears as one of the most important of this society because it is he who for want of archives records the customs, traditions and governmental principles of kings. The social upheavals, due to conquest, oblige the griot to live otherwise today. (Niane 1960, Preface)
Niane is mourning the loss of identity and the erosion of this important tradition, and we in the Diaspora should too. However, we should also consider the feat the griot has achieved in captivity to pull together and pass along the sacred threads of our origin stories.
Slavery wrenched the African from native soil and tore human beings from their homes, cultures, religions, from their lives. The resulting cultural and physical distance, the detachment and disassociation, presented challenges for the griot whose mind is psychologically enslaved. In a hostile environment, the griot must employ a unique set of skills and tools to rise above those challenges and share these stories in an honest and unvarnished manner.
The Audience of Many Versus the Sole Student
The plantation environment in Hinterland is a hostile one. Fortunately, the old slave, Cripple John, has knowledge of the past and keeps a watchful eye on the Massa. Maimed by the Busha in Forrester’s first novel, Cripple John functions as a subversive griot. In captivity, he tells parables to an audience of many. In Run To Freedom, the Massa uses him as a distraction to placate the slaves. Practicing sleight of hand, the old slave entertains with Anansi stories.
Anansi, dear to Jamaican culture, is a traditional West African traditional figure as well as a Deity. When related within earshot of the Busha and other observers, the story is harmless: Anansi outwits Br’er Snake to show Br’er Tiger, the king of the forest, that he, Anansi, was not the weakest.
At first, the story appears no different from the tales in Aesop’s Fables, the solitary book in Prudence’s meagre library. However, Cripple John has named a cultural remnant forbidden by the enslavers and turned him into a hero. The name, Anansi, is uttered several times to the people. Despite it being a parable, it is a success for the griot in his war of attrition against the slave master and the system.
The fact that we know about Anansi today is not due just to modern researchers of African history. The storytelling magicians on the plantations passed on valuable information through their stories so the young slaves could gain a strong and lasting link to the charm, appeal and character of the trickster god, understanding that they could – though seemingly powerless – put one over on Busha Snake and Massa Tiger.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S%C3%A9n%C3%A9gal-Griot_Diola_(AOF).jpg François-Edmond Fortier (1862-1928), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
When the Pupil is Ready, the More Powerful Griot Appears
When the Pupil is Ready, the More Powerful Griot Appears
On the plantation, the enslaved griot doesn’t have the luxury of a large audience in an amphitheater. Frequently, they are for an audience of one: the enslaved person who is ready. The heroic stories are a secret.
Co-protagonist Kofi has a burning desire for freedom. The author creates one of the most successful moments in Run to Freedom when Cripple John shares his own epic journey of escape with Kofi. He reveals his African name, Kweisi Kopon, in this story, rejecting the name given to him by the Massa. The pair’s meeting serves as a vehicle for Kofi’s initiation and elevates Cripple John to traditional griot status.
As D. T. Niane hinted in the above quote, “the griot must live otherwise.” In captivity, the griot’s stories must help turn the dream of freedom into an active quest.
The Expanding Medium of the Griot
In Hinterland, the griot role shifts from character-to-character, from-medium-to medium. The story has an omniscient narrator who could prove to be a distraction for the reader, but not in this story. The omniscient narrator functions as the griot in the African tradition of storytelling, giving us the big picture and explaining why the characters have chosen to live lives of resistance. By gathering the seemingly disparate threads of past and the present, this griot weaves new cloth, reminding the reader of his or her personal relationship with this storied past.
In the early chapters of the book, Prudence embodies the role of an anti-griot. She would have heard Cripple John’s stories on the plantation. However, she is deeply immersed in Aesop’s Fables as she reads daily for herself and Massa’s children. As a relatively comfortable house slave, under the Massa’s gaze, she is doubly detached from the source of African storytelling and ideas and notions of freedom.
Even so, readers appreciate that she is a bridge, helping an oral society to transform itself and acquire new means of storytelling and communication.
Why Do We Consume Stories
We consume stories for entertainment and education, but we also read for inspiration and healing. Hinterland lights a fire in the modern reader. As an adventure story and a fictionalized account of early Jamaican history, it fortifies us for the road ahead.
August 6th 2023 marked 61 years since Jamaica lowered the British flag and raised the black, yellow, and green standard for freedom. Some Jamaicans are not old enough to have felt that first flush of pride afforded the eyewitnesses. While the traditions are passed down often imperceptibly as we watch and mimic our parents and elders, we need the storyteller, our modern griot, to help take us back to that time and tie us firmly to our larger histories.
The griot is an artist, able to go beyond the boundaries of the ordinary to stir the imagination and show us what is possible. The griot would have us on the edge of our seats, feeling Jamaica’s burning desire to shake off the shackles of enslavement and control and be free to make its own decisions as a nation. The griot would help us imagine the resolute imagination, creativity and decision-making around the design of the Jamaican standard, which looks nothing like the Union Jack.
The griot would point out to us that Jamaica is shaped like the legendary Third Eye. He or she would tell us how the Maroons subconsciously gathered their wits and declared themselves warriors the minute they set foot on this eye-shaped island.
Obviously, this is storytelling and not scientific enquiry, but all nations and cultures create their own distinct and distinctive heroic stories. The enslaved subconsciously declared “We a keep fi wi yeye pon unno.” Indeed, the runaways and the enslaved constantly undermined the will of the Massa beneath his proverbial gaze.
Expanding the Function of the Griot in the Diaspora
Today the Maroons don’t have to pick up arms. However, the griot still functions as the keeper of the flame. Jamaican public servants like Maroon Vivian Crawford, head of the Institute of Jamaica, continue in their role, teaching and preserving Jamaican history and culture. Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks and many others amaze us as they deconstruct and restore our history through research, orality and the written word.
The Author is a Griot
At the end of the novel, Quaco, the Maroon griot, fills in the holes in Prudence’s education when he says, “Yes a griot is a storyteller, but we are true griot who are not held captive like Queen Yaahyah’s brother, we can share the true stories of our people.” The Diaspora Maroon queen, knowing the sacrifice Cripple John has made to keep the community alive, subtly corrects Quaco and expands the role of the griot. She knows that exigencies of the war of attrition demand the expansion of the role:
The griot is responsible for the healing and nurturing of our spirits. He, or she, must be a great counsellor based on the knowledge of the past. (Hinterland 2023, 175-176)
We see Quaco’s point, but we agree with the queen. There are nuances.
As readers, we have the advantage of being able to look back to assess value. Meanwhile, griots are born, rising up to study and interpret signs and messages and putting them in context as new challenges affect and confront each generation.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Accompong_Maroon_Festival_IMG_6766.jpg
Audrey Dreygo Headley, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On January 6 each year, the Accompong Maroons celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the 1739 peace treaty with the British.
We are beneficiaries of the work of the Maroon griots, Queen Nanny, Paul Bogle and others. Their legacy is inscribed on Cripple John, Quaco, Prudence, Kofi and other characters in the novels, written documents. Each griot plays a necessary role in “healing and nurturing” the spirit of the people and the nation.
Before western colonization and slavery, the griot class represented pure oral tradition. The fragmentation visited upon the African in the Diaspora requires we consider admitting the authors who focus on restoring history and memory, to this hallowed storytelling class.
Dawn Forrester Price’s storytelling choices made in Run to Freedom and Hinterland, anoint her as modern-day griot. In these uncertain times where old issues of race and class continue to roil the United States, Jamaica and other countries, the griot plays an essential and critical role in helping African people find their way using the griot as our North Star.
Forrester Price’s titles are available wherever books are sold, including Amazon.com.
Works Cited.
Price, Dawn Forrester. (2022). Run to Freedom. Kingston, Jamaica: BambuSparks Publishing.
Price, Dawn Forrester. (2023). Run to Freedom: Hinterland. Kingston, Jamaica: BambuSparks Publishing.
Niane, D.T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Essex, England: Longman Group Limited.
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