Marc Aronson's and Marina Budhos's family histories have something in common: sugar production. When they realized this, the two began to delve more deeply into their progenitors' pasts and in doing so learned of the brutal legacy of sugar slavery. In their book Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science, the authors discuss how the demand for this "remarkable substance" influenced the course of world history and how they came to tell a factual story infused with a personal point of view.
Your book includes many individual stories within the larger scope of sugar's history. Were any of those stories surprise discoveries? Marina Budhos: For me, it was Bechu's testimony. I was delving into overseers' manuals and there he was, eloquently speaking before the West India Royal Commission, an indentured worker speaking about the [horrific] conditions in British Guiana. That felt like a crucial link.
And then there was the Gandhi story. An indentured worker [from India, working the sugar mills of South Africa] showed up in [Mohandas K.] Gandhi's office in Johannesburg with broken teeth and broken ribs, and Gandhi looked at him and said, 'What is he? A slave? An employee?' His passion for nonviolence and the formation of a philosophy began that day. That stunned me.
Marc Aronson: This story covers thousands of years, the whole globe, and millions of people. Yet we were determined to get to the individual stories, in part because this began with us as individuals.....
The one voice that we have from the Caribbean that came out of sugar slavery is the music. [For me] it was almost a relief to hear that life emerge from a story that is so relentlessly brutal.
Your images prove how little sugar refinery has changed over hundreds of years. MA: In the book we included archival drawings of Antigua in 1838 and contemporary photos of sugar work in Puerto Rico, in Hawaii, and in the Dominican Republic-the work is the same.
MB: Marc and I were in Guyana in 1996, watching men with cutlasses cutting cane. In Guyana, they can't mechanize because it's too difficult for tractors and machinery [to maneuver in] the mud, so they're still harvesting the cane it as they did in the 18th and 19th centuries. In so many ways this work has not changed.
Nonfiction today allows for a greater use of personal voice. For young people who are trying to tell a factual narrative, how much personal narrative is appropriate? MB: On the adult side, the practice of New Journalism makes use of the personal voice and fictional techniques. The trend in education places so much emphasis on [understanding] what narrative is, as well as conflict and character. There's no reason that everything students are learning about narrative can't also be placed within the realm of nonfiction. There's no clear dividing line.
MA: The old challenge of nonfiction for kids was finding information, "Can you find enough stuff?" Now kids are inundated with information and the challenge is to find a path through it. There are many other things we could say about sugar, but we've built this narrative out of the density of information that's out there.
Speaking of forming a narrative, did you know that you wanted to end your book with how sugar led Gandhi to "satyagraha," his philosophy of nonviolence? MB: In the book, we are really talking about the progression of ideas, and it culminates with Gandhi's formation of satyagraha. Marc, didn't I come to you and say, 'That's our ending?'
MA: Yes you did....When you're writing about sugar slavery you're writing about extreme misery, and death. And then to have it turn, to lead to freedom, to satyagraha-that's when we felt like it wasn't just a miserable story, it's a story about what all of humanity is-our worst-and-our best.
Ninety-six percent of enslaved Africans worked in the sugar lands; only four percent came to North America. When did we know we had a book? When we looked at the story that American kids learn about slavery, and realized that we were looking at only four percent of the enslaved population from Africa. That story is the tiniest sliver of this larger story.
Nonfiction Tips to Share with Students from Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos:
1. Follow your passion, your interest. Start with a point of view.
2. Form your theory and build your narrative. Investigate it, challenge it. You have to be responsible; if you're wrong, modify your theory.
3. Account for how you got there. Show your readers, "I got this from here. If you disagree, if you think there's another way to look at this, great! Have at it!"
Jennifer M. Brown is the children's editor for Shelf Awareness, a daily enewsletter for the publishing trade. She recently launched the website Twenty by Jenny, which recommends titles to help parents build their child's library one book at a time.
We have so many children in our schools who like to read non-fiction, but there aren't too many writers of non-fiction who use that narrative voice you talk of. It makes it much more difficult to read, so our lower readers never really explore non-fiction at all.
Posted by Laura Leib on November 5, 2010 12:12:05PM
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