(Re)Presentation of Violence and Crime in Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women, and Andrea Levy’s the Long Song
Authors: Solomon AKUSO, Ezekiel , Alhassan SAJO, Rachel 
Published: September 2024

Recent studies on contemporary Caribbean narratives have predominantly focused on topics such as racism, migration, absentee fathers, multiculturalism, and displacement. However, there are no adequate critical works on issues of violence, crime, and resistance within Caribbean novels. This paper employs a qualitative research approach to examine violence, crime, and resistance in Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song as Caribbean neo-slave narratives. This research, guided by the New Historicist perspective, seeks to demonstrate the vulnerability of slaves to various forms of violence and crime in the Caribbean, illustrate the use of physical violence as a public spectacle of punishment, and reveal the slaves’ inner determination to resist, as depicted in the texts under study. The research argues that violence permeates the texts, transcending boundaries of gender, race, class, and nationality, with all groups contributing to and being affected by the web of violence within the context of Jamaican/Caribbean slavery. The study, attuned to the New Historicist critical lens, recognizes all the voices that make up the history of that era and demonstrates how black slave women participated in Jamaican resistance during the enslavement era. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song not only portray various instances of violence, resistance, separation/child and intra-black slave violence and crime and their implications but also create and transform history to invite contemporary audiences to view the past through the lens of the present within the context of Caribbean neo-slave narratives. Recent studies on contemporary Caribbean narratives have predominantly focused on topics such as racism, migration, absentee fathers, multiculturalism, and displacement. However, there are no adequate critical works on issues of violence, crime, and resistance within Caribbean novels. This paper employs a qualitative research approach to examine violence, crime, and resistance in Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song as Caribbean neo-slave narratives. This research, guided by the New Historicist perspective, seeks to demonstrate the vulnerability of slaves to various forms of violence and crime in the Caribbean, illustrate the use of physical violence as a public spectacle of punishment, and reveal the slaves’ inner determination to resist, as depicted in the texts under study. The research argues that violence permeates the texts, transcending boundaries of gender, race, class, and nationality, with all groups contributing to and being affected by the web of violence within the context of Jamaican/Caribbean slavery. The study, attuned to the New Historicist critical lens, recognizes all the voices that make up the history of that era and demonstrates how black slave women participated in Jamaican resistance during the enslavement era. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song not only portray various instances of violence, resistance, separation/child and intra-black slave violence and crime and their implications but also create and transform history to invite contemporary audiences to view the past through the lens of the present within the context of Caribbean neo-slave narratives.