Freedom Child of the Sea

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

Freedom Child of the Sea is a mythic story of slavery. Like other myths,
this one relies heavily on pathetic fallacy: natural harmonies reflect
human happiness, and human oppression and exploitation alienate people
from the external world. The illustrations make this dichotomy clear. In
the glorious, full-page illustration of the golden world before the
slave traders arrived, elephants have the markings of giraffes, leaves
resemble zebra skins, fish have winglike fins, and humans wear elaborate
tiaras of shell. In contrast, the illustrations of present conditions
are characterized by a stark juxtaposition of dark and light elements.

The narrator, a boy just saved from drowning by another boy with a
beautiful face but a body covered “with welts and scars,” tells an
old man of the rescue. The old man responds with a story his grandmother
told him about the Freedom Child of the Sea. This child, born even as
his mother was thrown overboard from a ship carrying slaves to America,
embodies “all the pain his people suffered” and will continue to do
so “as long as there is oppression and cruelty in the world.”

Julia Gukova’s superb illustrations infuse the book with emotional
power. While they elaborate upon specific features of the story as it
unfolds, they suggest other meanings through symbolic elements in the
settings, some transparent, others intriguingly cryptic. Highly
recommended.