Themes and message

The main themes in Andrea Levy's essay “The Writing of The Long Song” are the legacy of slavery and history versus fiction. The author’s message is that while those of slave ancestry cannot disregard the humiliation and torture their ancestors endured, they also have reasons to feel proud of the legacy of slavery. Additionally, the author suggests that fiction can sometimes fill in the gaps of historical research; it can make historical facts more relatable because it gives back the past its lost voices.

The legacy of slavery

This theme is obvious from the beginning of the text and is explored in connection to slavery in Jamaica. The writer mentions from the beginning that she attended a conference on “the legacy of slavery” (l. 3) and that a Jamaican woman’s questions about feeling ashamed to have a slave ancestry inspired Levy to write a novel on the topic.

The essay explores the way slavery in Jamaica is usually presented through white people’s narratives and perspectives. This can upset and anger today’s descendants of slaves because these historical facts and testimonies are a “tale of violence and misery” (ll. 31).

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History versus fiction

The theme of history versus fiction is explored at a personal level in the essay, through Levy’s description of the process she underwent when she wrote the historical fiction novel The Long Song.

First of all, Levy states the difference between the two quite clearly—history is about facts, fiction is about imagination: “… the individual view has to come from the writer’s imagination. A historical novel may not pass the exacting standards of history as an academic discipline, but it is not supposed to.” (ll. 256-260)

However, she believes that there is value in historical fiction. She notes that history is built based on facts and surviving testimonies – which in the case of Jamaican slavery have often been biased:

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