San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Indra Zuno Exploring White slavery in Colonial America
Spent seven years researching and writing her first book, ‘Freedom Dues’
Indra Zuno was an accomplished theater and TV actress in her native Mexico before she moved to Los Angeles, aiming for a career in Hollywood. A day job as a courthouse Spanish interpreter paid the bills. One October day in 2008, she tuned into a National Public Radio interview with the highly regarded African American novelist Toni Morrison. What she heard eventually led her in a new direction as a writer.
Morrison was promoting her book about 17th century African slavery, “A Mercy,” and said that while doing research, she discovered — to her surprise — that there had also been a thriving White slavery market in pre-revolutionary War America.
Morrison pointed to “White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America” by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, which told of how England shipped destitute Irish and Scottish men, women and children as young as 8, as well as English convicts, to labor on the farms of the American colonies.
That book described how hopeful migrants were duped into signing contracts as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought and sold. Most contracts specified that indenture would last for a certain number of years, after which they could be freed. But many lived and died in servitude, the authors wrote.
“I had never heard anything about that,” Zuno said. “I was intrigued.”
She read “White Cargo” and anything else she could find on that period of American history. She was sure someone would make a movie about it, a movie she would like to see. But a few years passed: no movie. It would be up to Zuno to tell the story.
The result of her efforts is “Freedom Dues.” The historical novel begins in 1729, when 15year-old Blair Eakins, seeking an escape from the crushing weight of famine, poverty and prejudice in Northern Ireland, agrees to indentured service in the colonies in order to begin a new life. At the same time, 10-year-old Mallie Ambrose, an orphan and pickpocket who was arrested and convicted for stealing a handkerchief, is banished to the colonies to be sold. Their paths cross as they both endure and survive.
The book’s title refers to the payment the servants received when they completed the contract; the dues, like a parting gift, could have been clothing, some money, some land and seeds to plant. The freed servants tended to settle in Georgia, Kentucky and in and around the Appalachian Mountains.
Not that they were welcomed everywhere. The Scotch-irish laborers were thought by the English colonists to be illiterate criminals.
“It is really amazing to discover that every new group of immigrants are looked at with distrust and disdain by those who are already here,” Zuno said.
Even the young Benjamin Franklin railed against immigrants, “especially those from Germany,” she said. “The Germans didn’t speak English. I think the Germans were the 18th century Guatemalans.”
Franklin’s immigration views mellowed as he grew older, but colonists tired of the British habit of dumping convicts here. They put a stop to it when the Revolutionary War began.
“After that, Britain started sending convicts to Australia,” Zuno said.