Die the Long Day narrates the 24 hours following the flight, capture, and brutal murder of Quasheba, a fugitive slave, on an 18th-century Jamaican plantation. Quasheba is remembered, retroactively, for her defiance of, despite ultimate defeat by, both the extreme gendered violence of the plantation and the paternalism of the narrative. The climax of this novel is Quasheba’s funeral, on which her community insists in accordance with their communal, African religious (Myal) rites. In these following pages I will consider how Quasheba’s spirit galvanizes this community as much as it may threaten to destroy it, and how this narrative places Obeah/Myal at the center of spiritual survival in the face of ever-present physical—and social—death during and after slavery, and at the center of strategies for the survival of its aftereffects.

《漫长的一天》讲述了逃亡奴隶 Quasheba 在 18 世纪牙买加种植园的逃亡、被捕和野蛮谋杀后的 24 小时。Quasheba 被追溯地记住，因为她蔑视，尽管最终失败了，种植园的极端性别暴力和叙事的家长式作风。这部小说的高潮是 Quasheba 的葬礼，她的社区根据他们共同的非洲宗教 (Myal) 仪式坚持葬礼。在接下来的几页中，我将考虑 Quasheba 的精神如何激励这个社区尽可能多地威胁到摧毁它，以及这个叙述如何将 Obeah/Myal 置于面对永远存在的身体和社会死亡的精神生存中心在奴隶制期间和之后，以及其后遗症的生存战略的中心。