Trevor Burnard’s ‘Hearing Slaves Speak’
(Published by The Caribbean Press, 2011)
‘HEARING Slaves Speak’ is an eye-opener, offering a few reasons, after centuries of pampering and indifference, for dedicating a complete year to commemorate the sacrifices and celebrate the triumphs of people of African descent.
The sacrifices of enslaved people were many and varied, a study in character building of the individual and family value in group situations. The pains of the enslaved were enormous and unsettling, a study in longsuffering, endurance and willpower.  The triumphs of people of African descent are emphatic, excellent sources of inspiration.
In ‘Hearing Slaves Speak’, Trevor Burnard has extracted and compiled 92 cases from tons and tons of material to show that enslaved people deserve more respect than is generally accorded them.
Burnard, in his introduction to the book, says that the record “reveals enslaved people as real people, as individuals who often quarrelled with each other but whom, it seems, shared similar aspirations and dreams about the lives they might be able to fashion for themselves.”
He goes on to say that those cases show how the responses from white minority confirm ‘slaves’ humanity and individuality. As real people, enslaved people were always speaking but we were not attuned to their voice. As real people, enslaved people were always speaking, but the finer elements of their thoughts and opinions were not recorded, a grievous loss to humanity, giving rise to suspicion and tyranny.
The loss of those voices that could have wrought understanding created a vacuum for mischief.  The scholarship in this singular book, ‘Hearing Slaves Speak’, will fill, to some extent, that lacuna in the ongoing discourse on enslaved people.
But ‘Hearing Slaves Speak’ can be read on another level. Concluding his informative introduction (more than twenty pages long), Burnard says: “If we hear slaves speak and listen to what they say, then those people, long dead but not forgotten, can tell us things of value, both in order to understand the past and also to appreciate the present and prepare for the future.” Circumstances should not make us deaf to the voice of the less fortunate, especially in these instances when the enslaved knew about the rights of the slave and the responsibilities of the master. That unrecorded voice “possibly presaged larger political action.” (It would be useful, at this point, to remember the 1823 Demerara Slave Revolt that occurred around the same period covered in this book.)
Burnard gives other reasons for the compilation of such a book. He says that “one cannot look at the past in an entirely dispassionate way. One needs empathy for one’s ancestors, and for the situation that they found themselves in.” A principal aim of the series, he said, “is to introduce, especially for the people of Guyana, who live the legacy of enslavement and the brutality of plantation life unto the present day, reminders of the past that has so shaped the present.”
The period under examination here is Berbice, Guyana, during the early 19th Century (1810 – 1820) at the tail-end, as it were, of slavery. This period was characterised by the seemingly softening of the harshness of slavery; a period when an unusual (curious) Office of the Fiscal came into operation. This office offered the enslaved, who were not legally allowed to go to the court, a platform for recourse. It was a place of intense negotiations between the enslaved and the masters, each jockeying to appear in a good light. In effect, that Office brought some semblance of balance in the society, whereby the plantation managers can be cautioned for excesses, even though, more often than not, the aggrieved slaves did not get justice.
Despite all the above, it was at, and through, the Office of the Fiscal that the voice of the enslaved was heard and recorded, howbeit with some amount of editorial discretion. Many of the cases were ridiculous, hilarious and thought-provoking.
The editorial discretion in the recording of the cases was tempered by a section of factual data labelled, ‘General Statistics, Berbice, 1827 – 32’, and tabulated in this order:
1) Prices of slaves,
2) Summary of types of punishment,
3) Punishments on each estate, and
4) Total Absence of punishments. 
Other useful information in this section includes the listing of names of plantations and their managers.
‘Hearing Slaves Speak’ portrays the enslaved as human with desire to fashion the future, painting a “vivid portrait of slave life in the last decades of slavery in British Guiana, insisting on their rights as workers.”
‘Hearing Slaves Speak’ is about hearing human speaking. (To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)