Speak Right On: Conjuring the Slave Narrative of Dred Scott
Readers may know the name of Dred Scott from the infamous 1857 legal case in which the US Supreme Court handed down a ruling that although Scott had sued for his freedom, he was, in fact, the property of his owner. The case caused an enormous public outcry, and Mary Neighbour, in her novel Speak Right On, transforms that legal decision – and Scott’s own life – into very powerful, very gripping fiction.
The novel ranges far beyond simply narrating the events of Scott’s life and its central crisis; Neighbour uses the case to paint a broader picture of a country sick at its heart with the disease of cancer. Her evil characters, though patterned on real-life people, sometimes feel too thoroughly evil to be dramatically satisfying, but her morally complicated characters are wonderfully rendered, and the historical context is very skillfully woven into the plot.
Recommended.
