The Book Zong

The book Zong tells the story that cannot be told but must be told. The story starts in September 1781, the slave ship Zong set sail from the east coast of Africa bound for Jamaica under the command of Captain Luke Collingwood. The "cargo" consisted of 470 Africans. The word "cargo" is used instead of passengers, as this is how the slaves were treated. They were treated like property. There was an allotted time for the journey, which was six to eight weeks, but due to navigational errors it extended into four months.

The slaves were mistreated and malnourished. By the end of November, sixty Africans had died for their yearn for water and food. Forty more had thrown themselves into the sea because of thirst and agitation. The most disturbing of all was that on orders of the captain, another 150 Africans were then thrown into the sea to their deaths. Captain Collingwood believed that if they died on board by "natural causes," the owners would have to consent to the loss. If the slaves die by drowning, the loss would be covered by the owners' insurance policy.

In England, a famous case resulted from this incident. It was called the Gregson v. Gilbert. Looking back at this case now, it is astonishing that this was not

tried as a murder trial. Since the Africans who had been killed were regarded as property not as human beings, the legal dispute focused more on insurance legalities. In this dispute the insurers declined to pay the owners' claim, and the owners challenge that decline in court. The owners won in the original trial, but the Court of King's Bench overturned the jury's decision on appeal.

Philip's book Zong, tells the story of these events that occurred. They are being told from the perspective of the slaves on board the ship. Philip doesn't just tell it as a regular story she writes it different than expected and uses rules for her composition. She chooses to limit herself to the words used in King's Bench decision, which was the only part of the litigation to make its way into the law reports. With her determination to tear apart the legal text to reveal more than the law revealed at that time, she turns this legal text into her "word store" for the composition of her book-length sequence of poems. She sees that within the terms of those laws there is human suffering in plain English. She literally deconstructs the decision, pulling apart the words with which it is composed, then rearranging them to construct her own text. She forms her own language for this book.

Philip knows that a story as this should be told in a manner that the reader can teleport themselves right on board the Zong. Only by doing so will the reader really understand and feel what the slaves were feeling. Besides using the legal text as her "word store", her poem construction takes the form of confusion. With the words scattered

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