It all started there. With this incident reported by the captain of a slave ship in 1774, and found in the archives of the city of Nantes. It all started there. From a desire to swap. Trade away technical discourse for the spoken word. The cant of the seaman for the scream of the captives. It all started with a question. How to tell, how to retell this story told by men? Without fuss or artifice. Otherwise. Upend the reader’s expectations.

Abandon all hope, you who think a story of slavery will be a novel of adventure. An epic tale, a heroic, tragic story filled with rape, pillaging, brawls, and death. Running in all directions. And we’re never bored because something is always going on. Inevitably.

Abandon all hope, you who think I’m going to tell such a tale. Grandiose. Exotic. Unimaginable. Unheard of, crammed with details, numbers, twists and turns. Action. Vivid description to move you, make you see it, as if I’d been there. I wasn’t there, that’s all I can say for sure. But any one of us could have been there, so universal are the ordeals. Familiar and familial, by our very existence.

Turn back, you who dream of setting off on this path. You will be taken captive. Chained to the words against your will. Locked up in this story that repeats itself like a chant, prefers new chapters to endings, the surest stammers to sharp conclusions.

This story is not a story, but a poem. This story is not a story, but an attempt at a shift in a space where there are no longer witnesses to speak, where the human being, plunged into the darkness of a bottomless blue-black sea, must confront the cruelest trials that exist: aporia and the death of the spoken word.

Like these shadowy figures put in chains long ago, the reader is condemned not to move from this moment on. Just listen with no other distraction to this chorus of women. At the risk of losing your bearings, hear once more these hearts beating.