M NourbeSe Philip


Zong!

2008
Published by Weslyan University Press
The Mercury Press in Canada
http://www.nourbese.com


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M NourbeSe Philip, born 1947, lives and works in Toronto, Canada

Zong! is a book-length poem not so much ‘about’ but ‘entangled in’ the late eighteenth century British court case regarding the throwing overboard of 150 ‘negroe’ slaves by the captain of the slavetrading ship Zong during its trip from the West Coast of Africa to Jamaica. NourbeSe Philip constructs her texts in the belief that this is a story ‘that cannot be told … [but] that must tell itself.'”

Fred Wah, Jacket 2, 2013