Malik Al Nasir was born in Liverpool to mixed parentage, with a white mother and a black father. Bemused by childhood memories of racist shouts for him to go back to where you came from he came from Liverpool after all he began to look into his fathers ancestry.
This resulting book charts the twists and turns of his journey into the past and explores an untold chapter in both Black and British history. As Malik investigates his roots, he reveals a new history of the transatlantic slave trade and the role of Scottish, Dutch and English merchants.
Largely set between Liverpool and Demerara, in what was British Guiana, this is a story of sugar and of the barbaric transportation and abuse of human beings that facilitated our insatiable desire for the sweet stuff.
In Guyana, he discovers ancestors that had been both enslaved Africans and prominent white slaveholders. He finds himself part of a complex lineage linking slaveholdings to high sheriffs, mayors, a British Prime Minister and bankers, whose companies formed major modern-day financial institutions, some of whom have yet to acknowledge their connections to the slave trade.
Announced by the University of Cambridge as the winner of the Vice-Chancellors Global Impact Award for his research, Searching for My Slave Roots unravels not just the legacies of slavery but also plantation economics and the wealth of a slaveholding dynasty and that he himself was a descendant of thiers and those they had enslaved. A major theme of this history is the nuanced ways that trauma plays down through generations of the enslaved, and how wealth and privilege plays out across generations of slaveholders and their descendants.
Recenzijos
PRAISE FOR LETTERS TO GIL:
A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure
Irenosen Okojie
An incredible story, one that will have you jaw-dropped in disbelief at the cruelty meted out to Malik as a boy but also uplifted by his courageous, irrepressible exuberance, by his determination to defy the shitty hand he was dealt after he was put into the care system. And at the centre of this remarkable story stands the towering figure of Gil Scott-Heron This is an intensely powerful and vivid memoir When a book like Letters to Gil comes along, you are reminded of how indomitable the human spirit can be and how light can emerge from darkness, and joy from pain
Jamie Byng
Letters to Gil [ is] part of a growing corpus of Black British memoir that confronts difficult subjects It is also a tribute to artists who blend creative expression with fearless political commentary, such as the hip-hop artists Mos Def, Nas and the members of Public Enemy. With this brave memoir, Al Nasir can be counted among them
TLS
So compelling Given the magnetism that he clearly displays I only hope that he will find time to be a new leader for the UK jazz movement Voices such as his are certainly needed. His story is a wake-up call
Marlbank
Tells the story of his life including his brutal treatment in care homes as a child and his friendship with the musician-poet [ Gil Scott-Heron]. His candid, eye-opening story includes a joyously uplifting tale of the time he accompanied Scott-Heron to meet Stevie Wonder
Independent, Books of the Month
Malik Al Nasir is an author, film maker, performance poet, and an award winning academic from Liverpool.
Malik started tracing his roots back through Caribbean slavery over 20 years ago and his pioneering research has been recognised by Sir Hilary Beckles (Chair: CARICOM Commission for slavery reparations), historian David Olusoga, and The University of Cambridge, where Malik has just completed a PhD in history with a full scholarship. In recognition of the significance of his research, Malik received several awards whilst at Cambridge, as well as an honorary Doctorate from Liverpool Hope University.
Malik is co-founder of the policy making initiative, 'Black Academia Lifting the Barriers.' He has produced and appeared in several documentaries with Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Benjamin Zephaniah, Public Enemy, Ice T and many other luminaries.
