Indledning
How can I be proud of my Jamaican roots when my ancestors were slaves? This question was posed by a young woman to Andrea Levy, a British writer with roots in Jamaica, during a conference in London.
The question got Levy thinking about why anyone would feel shame about having ancestors who were slaves and gave her the idea to write a novel that would convince people, including the young woman, to have pride in their slave ancestors.
This novel would be called The Long Song. Levy considered many things in the initial phase of the book because the last thing she wanted to do was to write a novel about slavery.
The aforementioned question is also the basis of the theme of the essay "The Writing of The Long Song" by Levy, where she further elaborates on her thoughts about the book and the considerations she made while writing it. She also talks about the historical events of British slavery.
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Uddrag
In this text, Levy tries to persuade the reader by appealing to their emotions, pathos, by constantly referring to the atrocities of the slave era and by having a humorous and down-to-earth approach, as the previously mentioned interjection is an example.
Levy uses historical facts, such as quotes from historical texts, and thus tries to persuade the recipient by appealing to logos: "Lady Nugent, for example, the wife of the Governor of Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, writes in her diary: "The sea was a little troubled this evening (...)" (p. 9, lines 181-185).
The fact that Levy uses the logos appeal in her text and is clearly well educated in the history of slavery and has slaves as ancestors gives her integrity and makes her seem credible, thus appealing to the reader with the ethos appeal.
Levy's essay is very personal and biased, but she uses a lot of historical knowledge to give the text legitimacy, making it seem factual and considered: "Sometime in the 1500s, white Europeans "discovered" the Caribbean along with the Americas" (p. 8, lines 63-65).
Levy's personality in the essay is already very clear at the beginning because she uses first person pronouns and refers to her own life in the first paragraph: "Of Jamaican heritage myself, I wondered (...)" (p. 7, line 11).
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