초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This paper examines Jeffrey Brace’s The Blind African Slave, Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace (1810), in which I particularly focus on the memories and movements of African flora that accompanied Brace on transatlantic slave ships and in new places. Jeffrey Brace’s memoir, which was forgotten for almost two centuries, is unique and valuable both as a historical and as a literary text that once again alerts the contemporary readers to how the colonization and mastery of indigenous nature accompanied the history of transatlantic slavery. The Blind African Slave expresses Brace’s compassion and affection toward native flora and fauna and reveals how botanic nature sustained his traumatic life in slavery and afterwards. To better understand Brace’s narrative, I introduce a brief research on the extraction and transportation of African flora and the memory of botanical nature, and demonstrate how it made a profound impact on Brace’s life in Vermont as a farmer. In Vermont, whether intended or not, Brace follows the Jeffersonian vision of an ideal agrarian citizen by practicing his farming skills. Reading The Blind African Slave presents a rare chance to study African nature and New England farming life recorded by a colored man.
