08/23/2026
Today is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, a United Nations observance designated by UNESCO to honor the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and those who fought for its abolition. In commemoration of this day, we are including a list of critically-acclaimed books and movies about this topic.
https://www.unesco.org/en/days/slave-trade-remembrance
NON-FICTION
1. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade — Christopher L. Miller
Miller examines how the French Atlantic slave trade shaped French literature and culture, connecting Africa, the Caribbean, and France and showing how slavery became embedded in French intellectual life.
2. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution — C. L. R. James
This landmark history recounts the Haitian Revolution and shows how enslaved people in French Saint-Domingue defeated the plantation system and established independent Haiti.
3. Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius — Megan Vaughan
Drawing on court records, slave-ship logs, colonial correspondence, and other archives, Vaughan reconstructs everyday life and social relations within the eighteenth-century French and later British slave society of Mauritius.
FICTION
1. Slave Old Man (L'Esclave vieil homme et le molosse) — Patrick Chamoiseau
Set in Martinique, this acclaimed novella follows an elderly enslaved man who escapes a plantation and flees into the rainforest while being pursued by his enslaver and a vicious dog.
2. I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (Moi, Tituba sorcière...) — Maryse Condé
Condé imaginatively tells the life of Tituba, an enslaved Caribbean woman, exploring the violence of slavery, displacement, resistance, and the spiritual traditions of enslaved people.
3. Beyond the Door of No Return — David Diop
Set partly in eighteenth-century Senegal, Diop's historical novel follows a French naturalist whose relationship with an African woman draws him into the world of the Atlantic slave trade and the violence of European colonialism.
FILMS
1. West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (West Indies ou les Nègres marrons de la liberté, 1979) — Med Hondo
Hondo's audacious musical traces slavery, colonialism, and resistance in the French Caribbean while connecting the history of enslaved Africans to continuing forms of colonial exploitation.
2. Ceddo (1977) — Ousmane Sembène
Sembène's historical drama explores the political and religious transformations of precolonial Senegal and the forces that contributed to the capture and trafficking of Africans within broader systems of enslavement and European expansion.
3. Haiti: The Way to Freedom (Haïti, le chemin de la liberté, 1973) — Arnold Antonin
This landmark Haitian documentary traces the country's history from the transatlantic slave trade and French colonialism through the Haitian Revolution and the creation of the first Black republic.
4. 1802, l'épopée guadeloupéenne (2006) — Christian Lara
This historical drama depicts the Guadeloupean resistance led by Louis Delgrès against Napoleon's 1802 expedition to restore French authority and slavery.
5. Sugar Cane Alley (Rue Cases-Nègres, 1983) — Euzhan Palcy
Palcy's acclaimed coming-of-age drama follows a boy and his grandmother living within the impoverished plantation society of 1930s Martinique and reveals the enduring social structures created by slavery.
