Searching for My Slave Roots

This book will be an exploration of an untold chapter in both Black and British history, seen through Malik’s own investigation into his mixed Guyanese heritage.

With ancestors that had been both enslaved people and prominent slaveholders, Malik Al Nasir will uncover a completely new narrative on historical transatlantic slavery and the role of Scottish, Dutch and English Merchants, whose holdings were financed through the proceeds of the Demerara sugar and slave trade. Malik will uncover a lineage linking slaveholdings to high sheriffs, mayors, a late Prime Minister and bankers, whose companies formed major modern-day financial institutions. Travelling around the Atlantic world, he will unravel the legacies of slavery, plantation economics and the wealth of a slaveholding dynasty that he himself descended from, and the nuanced ways that historic trauma plays down through generations of the enslaved, and how wealth and privilege plays out across generations of slaveholders and their descendants.

About the author

Malik Al Nasir is an author, performance poet and filmmaker from Liverpool. He has produced and appeared in several documentaries with Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Benjamin Zephaniah, Public Enemy, and many other luminaries. Malik started tracing his roots back through slavery over 15 years ago and his pioneering research has been recognised by Sir Hilary Beckles (Chair CARICOM Commission for slavery reparations), historian David Olusoga, and The University of Cambridge, where Malik has just started a PhD in history with a full scholarship in recognition of the significance of his life story.