Join us as we welcome David Palumbo-Liu to the SLE Salon.  Zong! is NourbeSe Philip’s book length poem published by Weslyan University Press, and by The Mercury Press in Canada. This extended 182 page poetry cycle is composed entirely from the words of the case report, Gregson vs. Gilbert, related to the murder of Africans on board a slave ship at the end of the eighteenth century. Professor David Palumbo Liu will introduce the poem and lead a discussion on it.

The case report Gregson vs. Gilbert, recounts the massacre by drowning of some 130 enslaved Africans over the course of ten days beginning on November 29th, 1781. The captain of the eponymous slave ship, Zong, having made many navigational errors resulting in extending the length of the voyage from West Africa to Jamaica ordered the Africans be thrown overboard so as to allow the owners of the ship, the Gregsons, to claim indemnity from their insurers, the Gilberts. When the insurers refused to honour the contract of insurance, the ship’s owners initiated legal action against them, which proved to be successful. Upon appeal, however, the insurers, the Gilberts were granted a new trial. The report of that hearing, Gregson vs Gilbert constitutes the only extant, public document related to the massacre. Through fugal and counterpointed strategies, Zong! explodes the coded, documented silence of the historical text to become an anti-narrative lament that tells the story of this haunting and tragic massacre: it cannot be told yet must be told; it can only be told by not telling.

Funding for SLE Salons is provided by VPUE's Academic-Residential Co-Curriculum (ARC).