The Black Ancestor

By Albert Russo

When Leodine, a young white girl living in the Belgian Congo, discovers that her great-grandmother was African, she feels tainted and somehow unclean. New dilemmas arise in her life: Should she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1935437054
• ISBN13: 9781935437055
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Imago Press
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A fine period piece, recommended

The deep seated racism is often unfounded. "The Black Ancestor" tells the tale of Leodine, a white girl in Belgian controlled Congo in a time where White supremacy was still the norm. When she finds she has a black ancestor, she is terrified the fact may turn her into an outcast with the white people of her society, and she soon embarks on a mission to find out who she truly is. "The Black Ancestor" is a fine period piece, recommended.

The Black Ancestor ... the story no one else has dared to write.

ALBERT RUSSO is an award-winning author that masters many disciplines: poetry, novels, short stories, essays as well as excellent photography books. Perhaps his better known works are those that recount his own fictionalized experiences and remembrances of growing up in post colonial Africa, as a Belgian national. I consider the best of these works to include "Mixed Blood" and "The Black Ancestor". Russo is a gifted storyteller, embracing all the depth of Hemingway. The best way to describe his talent is to provide the curious potential reader with a solid example of his genius. An excerpt from The Black Ancestor follows: In the middle of this sequence of fake or non-events I saw, shuffling towards me, someone whose gait was familiar: it was none other than Arnaud. He wore a pale blue nightgown and walked like a zombie, hiding his face with his two hands fanned out. I heard him whine, begging me to forgive him, or was he asking me again not to tell my parents what he'd done that other night in Rutshuru? He spoke as if his head were immersed in a water tank, and between each syllable I could see tiny bubbles pop. His speech became slurred and unintelligible, to the point where I no longer listened to him. But, all of a sudden, he moved his hands away, and I almost jumped out of bed: grafted to his neck I saw, not the face I knew, but that much smaller, monstrous head of an iguana. He was getting closer and closer to me, stealthily, and then, seeing how petrified I was, stopped short of touching me. From the gaping fold of his nightgown, around the midriff, stuck out the swollen red sting of a scorpion. It began to beat the time, like a metronome, a few inches from my bed. He remained in this position for a while, nailed to the ground, with that disgusting iguana head of his swinging in the void, and did not even deign to look at me. He seemed to be waiting for something or someone, and for a brief moment I ceased to be the focus of his attention. This is a style of writing that is soon to be considered a "lost treasure", as few new authors today have the wealth of experience, discipline and insight to write in this way. Buy this book. And then continue to explore the rich heritage we have inherited from ALBERT RUSSO. by Adam Donaldson Powell, 2010

An Exceptional Novel by Albert Russo

Novelist Albert The Black Ancestor draws the reader into an exploration of the inner life of feeling to witness the tortuous passages taken by the human spirit in its odyssey toward self-realization. Set in the Belgian Congo in the years immediately preceding the 1962 anti-colonial revolts, the novel narrates the coming of age of a young white girl against a backdrop of social and racial prejudices that are sometimes overt and more often concealed as an undercurrent of everyday life that runs beneath the surface of daily thought and activity. The tale is not one of sound and fury, which may be for the best, as tales of sound and fury often signify nothing. Instead The Black Ancestor weaves a subtle tapestry on narrative's loom, relating life's episodic journey with a more subdued voice, as if to say that the truly defining turns of our lives come upon us quietly, like thieves in the night; thieves that steal something away from our souls, and leave behind an abominable emptiness that we must somehow fill in order to go on living, and to continue growing into our future selves. Albert Russo's The Black Ancestor is another fine work of novelistic storytelling by a master craftsman at the top of his form and is highly recommended for many reasons, including its ability to remind us of the existence of living hearts and souls in a world that all too often teems with darkness.