Black Shack becoming a trap to give people crap

 After reading Black Shack Alley, it left me with a weird empty feeling. I would say I felt quite strongly about the emotions portrayed in the book because this novel is describing just a small portion of emotions of real like events that are still happening today. Which is why it is such a powerful and emotional novel. I could see how school was a representation of colonialism in a way of still having control over minorities even after so called “post-colonialism”. Because even though, people such as Jose think they are gaining their individualism back, they are still being controlled by the same system that colonized them, just in a more discrete (but also not so discrete) form. 

In Black Shack Alley, people are forced into obeying because if not, there is little room for survival. In my eyes, Jose’s grandmother M’man Tine is a symbol of hope and perseverance through hard times and it is just sad to see such innocent people and kids grow up in a place where death and sickness and poverty is so normalized that it simply takes away childhood and throws them straight into survival mode. 

You could also argue what it meant to leave and go to school. Did it mean that they were free and they had won or was it simply going even further back because you are now under full colonial rules and education. In terms of some of their mindsets, it would be a form of survival because there was no other way out but to others, it could be freedom and gaining back their individuality even if it meant betraying their ancestors in a way of losing the education and thinking of their people. 

After reflecting upon this novel, the first comparison that came to mind was the capitalist society and that might be a strange idea to have but it is a similar idea to the fact of how when these people from Black Shack Alley went to school, it was a way to get away from “old means” and gain their individuality back, but in reality they are just falling into another trap of perceived freedom but just being confined to the rules and thinking of colonialism again. This is just like capitalism in a way that people who try and escape it by thinking they’re going through another route but really  just taking a another way to end up in the same place. Just like instead of falling for beauty trends and thinking you’re avoiding capitalist means, you are simply funding a different chain of companies where the money all ends back up in the same system. 

This could totally be a stretch of thinking but for some reason this is the comparison that popped in my head first. A very depressing read that had me thinking again about how our society is today and how society tried to throw everything under the rug, but things are still happening and it might be even worse because it is more subtly done and so engrained that there does not seem like a way out anymore.