Black Food Book Review: Two Thousand Seasons

By Charo R. Walker
BlackFood News Reporter

Two Thousand Seasons is a very graphic book. The writer brings scenes and characters to life quite vividly. Admittedly, however, the book starts off a bit slow but then picks up with an intense portrayal of characters. The writing is challenging – it is no simple read – with the language and style both challenging the reader to think and to analyze the story.

The book traces the oppression of a group of black people by Arabs and then seasons later by ‘white destroyers’. Quite interestingly, the book showcases the resistance to that slavery. Too often, we, in the Diaspora, have been taught that African people were a people who were broken, shackled, and taken all too easily into slavery. This book, however, tells of those who fought back against their “would be” enslavers. It also shows the skill and intelligence of the Africans in outmaneuvering the enemy. It is a book that makes us proud of our African ancestry and that speaks to our strength and to our spirit of rebellion.

At the same time, the book shows how a select group of black people became so obsessed with the white way that they too became enslavers of their own people all because of greed. In fact, these few – kings and their hangers-on – joined forces with the ‘white destroyers’ to oppress and enslave their fellow Africans. The book then urges the reader not to loose “the way”. That is, the way of the ancestors, the way of tradition, the belief in the whole and not the individual and the need to fight against white oppression and slavery with all of its entrapments. ♦bf