Her parents were light-skinned Jamaicans who had settled in London after the war. She was born in London in 1956, the youngest of the four children of Winston and Amy Levy. Who knows what changed Levy from a Black girl who wanted to be like everyone else in her North London neighbourhood to a woman obsessed with rummaging through her Jamaican-British heritage? She received little encouragement from home. I wanted to lighten what lives slaves lived, to show how cheeky they were and how they managed to survive this ordeal." "July was a character I was going to have to sit with for six years, and I wanted to have some fun. But I wanted to write a story that Black people and White people would read - and would want to read."Īt the same time, she wasn't looking forward to studying one of the bleakest phases of human history, and so a mischievous heroine was her solution. "Slavery is a real taboo subject with Whites, who don't find much in the story of which they can be proud. For one thing, she wanted to encourage White readers to finish the book. Yet Levy insisted on a satirical approach. July survives the brutal aftermath of the Baptist War, the long peonage and stupendous poverty of "freedom," and the losses - never-ending - of loved ones. When it comes to slavery, however, laughter is a controversial matter. In The Long Song, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, July's cringing, conniving trek from slavery to freedom elicits nervous laughter. Small Island (2004), her bestselling book about the trials of a Jamaican couple in blatantly racist postwar England, made readers roar.
Her comedy erupts from her droll voice and her biting insight into human nature. Her primary implement is humour, which she uses to smooth the rocky road to empathy and truth.
Over the course of five novels, Levy has built a reputation for delivering unpredictable responses and unlikely approaches to the topic of Britain and race. "I am sure many of us have ancestors who owned slaves, whether we know it or not." She spoke to me on the phone from England in the slightly arch tone I remembered from a previous conversation. "Well, I should think so," said the author, who is descended from Jamaica's coloured classes. "Which of you would ever admit to slave-owning ancestors?" one woman asked, looking around. The women, all White, shuddered at the mind-boggling barbarity of the island's planters. Some time ago, novelist Andrea Levy met with a group of women to discuss her latest novel, The Long Song, a dark satire of the final years of Jamaican slavery as experienced by July, a young house slave. Andrea Levy’s Unpredictable Approach to Slavery
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