A review by tielqueen
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
5.0
This book is a saga that spans three generations of three initially unconnected families that cleverly, slowly brings them closer together over 500+ pages. I'll admit, for the first 2/3 of this book, I found it pretty difficult to keep track of the rotating cast of characters, for we get plunged into a new character's POV every ~50-60 pages. Serpell doesn't give the reader much guidance, neither explaining how these characters are connected, nor defining Zambian terms (Ocean Vuong does this too in his work as a way of denying the Western perspective, and I actually appreciate this).
This all paid off in Part Three, when we dive into the lives of the children. Themes of Marxist revolution that were threaded through earlier chapters take center stage here, as this generation wakes up to widespread government surveillance through phones/microchips embedded in the skin. This plotline reminds me a lot of Facebook because (a) Facebook provided free phones to millions of people in Africa and (b) Facebook is recently under huge fire due to an employee's leaked internal memo about Facebook's failure to prevent attacks on democracy and elections in dozens of countries. The author of this memo states that she "has blood on her hands," a quote exactly repeated by one of the characters in this book, when she reflects on her job microchipping Zambian residents.
Microdrones invoked by the government to quell rebellion (and more...) recall both an episode of Black Mirror and Slaughterbots, a video depicting microdrones that use facial recognition and AI to assassinate political opponents.
One last connection I drew was to Simone Browne's Dark Matters, which discusses how "contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery." Serpell references the longstanding history of Africans/Black people being used to test new experimental medicine repeatedly. In addition, these microchips provided for free to Zambians are just a trial run for a more global adoption of the devices.
After reading Serpell's acknowledgements, it's clear she put a ton of historical research into the book, like when she talks about the Space Race and the HIV epidemic. While she doesn't mention the above sources as inspirations for her work, the dialogue between them is not to be missed.
This all paid off in Part Three, when we dive into the lives of the children. Themes of Marxist revolution that were threaded through earlier chapters take center stage here, as this generation wakes up to widespread government surveillance through phones/microchips embedded in the skin. This plotline reminds me a lot of Facebook because (a) Facebook provided free phones to millions of people in Africa and (b) Facebook is recently under huge fire due to an employee's leaked internal memo about Facebook's failure to prevent attacks on democracy and elections in dozens of countries. The author of this memo states that she "has blood on her hands," a quote exactly repeated by one of the characters in this book, when she reflects on her job microchipping Zambian residents.
Microdrones invoked by the government to quell rebellion (and more...) recall both an episode of Black Mirror and Slaughterbots, a video depicting microdrones that use facial recognition and AI to assassinate political opponents.
One last connection I drew was to Simone Browne's Dark Matters, which discusses how "contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery." Serpell references the longstanding history of Africans/Black people being used to test new experimental medicine repeatedly. In addition, these microchips provided for free to Zambians are just a trial run for a more global adoption of the devices.
After reading Serpell's acknowledgements, it's clear she put a ton of historical research into the book, like when she talks about the Space Race and the HIV epidemic. While she doesn't mention the above sources as inspirations for her work, the dialogue between them is not to be missed.