Emotionally, Zong! left me gutted; It isn’t an easy book to read!

BY AMARI SUKHDEO

When I first picked up M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! I had no idea how to approach it. It wasn’t like any book I had ever read. The pages didn’t flow with neat, linear sentences; instead, they were scattered with fragmented words and phrases that seemed to: float, tumble, or drown across the space of the page. At first, I felt lost, unsure of how to read, or even understand what was in front of me. As I pressed on, that feeling of confusion began to mirror something deeper—an emotional and visceral reaction to the horror that the book explored.

Zong! is based on a horrifying historical event: the massacre of over 130 enslaved Africans aboard the Zong ship in 1781, who were thrown overboard so the ship’s owners could claim insurance for “lost cargo.” The only documentation of this atrocity is a cold, detached legal text from a court case, Gregson v. Gilbert. Philip uses this legal record as the foundation for her poetry, rearranging and breaking apart its language to reconstruct the unspeakable.

As I read, I realized the fragmented structure was not just artistic, but necessary. The disjointed, scattered words mimic the chaos and destruction experienced by the people aboard the Zong. The way Philip draws out words across the page sometimes leaving long stretches of silence forces you to feel the weight of that silence. It’s overwhelming. The gaps make you pause, leaving space for the unspeakable to sink in. The repetition of certain phrases made me feel as if I couldn’t catch my breath. It was disorienting, and at times it even made me feel physically sick when I thought about the reality behind the poetry.

What struck me most was how Philip uses language, or the breakdown of it to evoke the unspeakable trauma of the transatlantic slave trade. There is no straightforward narrative here because there cannot be one. The atrocity Philip is engaging with defies simple storytelling. By breaking apart the words and scattering them like debris, she mirrors the loss of lives, cultures, and identities that slavery inflicted. This wasn’t just a book to read, but an experience to endure, one that pulls you into its chaos and refuses to let you look away.

Emotionally, Zong! left me gutted. I found myself sitting in silence after finishing a section, trying to process the sheer weight of what I had just encountered. It’s not just the content, the unimaginable cruelty of throwing people overboard but the way the form makes you feel it. The confusion, the suffocation, the overwhelming nature of the text—it’s as if the book forces you to inhabit even a fraction of what those aboard the Zong might have felt.

Zong! isn’t an easy book to read, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s a book that confronts you with history in a way that no straightforward narrative ever could. By refusing to conform to traditional forms, Philip gives voice to the voiceless and makes space for mourning, reflection, and acknowledgment.