Sudanese Women, Slavery, and Race in Samiha Khrais’s Novel Slaves’ Peanuts

Abstract

This study shows how the contemporary novel Slaves’ Peanuts (2016) by the Jordanian novelist Samiha Khrais presents slavery as a dilemma in the late twentieth century in Sudan. The novel provides a fairly grim and evocative depiction of the enslavement of women in a non-slavery era, bringing to mind the notorious involvement of Portugal in the slave trade during colonial times, and the implications of that colonial involvement on modern-day “Third World” peoples. The study presents Khrais’s novel through postcolonial feminist writings, investigating negative stereotypes and making use of notions such as “double colonization,” “counterstory,” and “the subaltern” while emphasizing a close reading of the text. The Arabic novel displays with great realism repeated cycles of oppression against African people to emphasize the global impact of colonial rule and the need for former colonial countries to take responsibility and heal the wounds of the past. Finally, the essay shows how Khrais attempts a contrapuntal rebirth of the oppressed female protagonist who defiantly sends her daughter away from Portugal to prevent her from becoming a slave for ethnocentric European families still locked in colonial traditions.