Chango, the Biggest Badass

By Manuel Zapata Olivella

This is an epic novel of the African diaspora in the Americas, from the slave trade to Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. The crowning achievement of Afro-Colombian author, Zapata Olivella, “”Chango, el gran putas”” depicts the African American experience from an entirely different perspective-that of the gods who stand over the world and watch. Ranging from Brazil to New England but centered in the Caribbean, where countless slaves once arrived from West Africa, “”Chango”” recounts scenes from four centuries of involuntary displacement and servitude of the muntu, the people. Through the voices of Benkos Biojo in Colombia, Henri Christophe in Haiti, Simon Bolivar in Venezuela, Jose Maria Morelos in Mexico, the Aleijadinho in Brazil, or Malcolm X in Harlem, Zapata Olivella conveys, in luminous verse and prose, the breadth of heroism, betrayal, and suffering common to the history of people of African descent in the Western hemisphere.