Embodied Narratives: Reshaping Identity through Speculative Storytelling in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots

The body, storytelling, and identity are meaningfully intertwined in Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo (2009), a novel that resists easy classification and articulates provocative reflections on gender, race, and power. This chapter examines how Evaristo’s narrative strategies interweave (female) identity, the (Black and white) body, history, and storytelling to offer new perspectives on the experience of slavery. A work of speculative fiction—both a “what if” and a “this is what was” novel—Blonde Roots reimagines the transatlantic slave trade through racial inversion and geographical remapping. By merging and subverting literary conventions, from slave narratives to pro-slavery pamphlets, adventure tales, and travelogues, Evaristo interrogates the authority of historical narratives and exposes how power is perpetuated via storytelling. The novel foregrounds voices traditionally marginalised or deemed unspeakable, forcing readers to confront history from situated and unsettling perspectives. While Blonde Roots exhibits dystopian traits, its dystopia is primarily framed through a white lens, which mirrors the historical realities of Black slaves. Through Doris Scagglethorpe’s narration, Evaristo materialises an embodied subjectivity where race, gender, and class intersect with vulnerability and estrangement. Ultimately, storytelling becomes a transformative and empowering act, enabling Doris to reclaim the past, assert agency, and envision a liveable future.