''The Atlantic Sound'' is a 2000 travel book by
Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips (born 13 March 1958) is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels (for which he has won multiple awards), Phillips is often described as a Black Atlantic writer, since much of his fictional ...
. It was published in the UK by
Faber and Faber and in the US by
Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
. In the words of the ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...
'' review: "Journeys, as forces of spiritual and cultural transformation, bind this trio of nonfiction narratives, which explores the legacy of slavery in each of the three major points of the
transatlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
."
Geoffrey Moorhouse
Geoffrey Moorhouse, FRGS, FRSL, D.Litt. (29 November 1931 – 26 November 2009) was an English journalist and author. He was born Geoffrey Heald in Bolton and took his stepfather's surname. He attended Bury Grammar School. He began writing as a ...
, assessing the book for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', wrote: "Caryl Phillips was born in
St. Kitts, but he's been an Englishman almost from the start, and has since become nearly as much at home in New York as he is in London. He is uncommonly well placed, therefore, to ponder the relationship between people of his own ancestry and those of Europe and North America, as well as that which has lately and self-consciously been pursued by black Americans and West Indians anxious to reclaim their stake in Africa. Because he's a writer and not an academic or a polemicist, he has done this lyrically in ''The Atlantic Sound,'' with an extremely balanced assessment divided into five episodes, each casting further light on the intricate patterns and prejudices of race."
Exploring what constitutes "home", Phillips repeats a journey he made as a child in the late 1950s on a banana boat from the
Caribbean to
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, then visits three cities pivotal to the African diaspora:
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
in England, where many ships involved in the triangular trade departed;
Elmina
Elmina, also known as Edina by the local Fante, is a town and the capital of the Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem District on the south coast of Ghana in the Central Region, situated on a bay on the Atlantic Ocean, west of Cape Coast. Elmina w ...
on the coast of
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, site of the most important slave fort in Africa; and
Charleston in the US south, where one-third of
African Americans were landed and sold into bondage, and where Phillips makes a pilgrimage to
Magnolia Cemetery to lay flowers at the grave of
Julius Waties Waring
Julius Waties Waring (July 27, 1880 – January 11, 1968) was a United States federal judge, United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina who played an important role in the early leg ...
, a white judge who played an important role in the early legal battles of the
American Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...
. Writing in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', reviewer
notes: "It is characteristic of Phillips's vision that, in excavating the hidden history of this antebellum tourist centre, he draws imaginative links between diasporic wanderers and a white man whose moral stand made him an outcast in his own hometown."
The book was described by ''
Kirkus Reviews'' as: "A splendidly honest and vividly detailed venture into some of history's darkest corners—by a novelist who is also a superb reporter." Comparisons have been drawn between this work and ''
Looking for Transwonderland,'' by Nigerian writer
Noo Saro-Wiwa
Noo Saro-Wiwa is a British-Nigerian author, noted for her travel writing. She is the daughter of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Education
Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and grew up in Ewell, Surrey in England. She attended ...
.
References
External links
* María Lourdes López Ropero
"Travel Writing and Postcoloniality: Caryl Phillips's ''The Atlantic Sound''" ''Atlantis'' 25.1 (June 2003): 51-62. .
African Diasporas Epistemology Blog, 16 November 2011.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atlantic Sound
2000 non-fiction books
Afro-Caribbean culture in the United Kingdom
Black British literature
Essay collections
Travel books