Half Blood Blues Analysis

The Half-Blood blues, by Esi Edugyan, is an intriguing novel that intertwines two haunted histories, in to a great story about the black experience in Nazi Germany. The novel revolves around Hieronymus Falk, a very talented trumpet player in a jazz band. The jazz band goes through many obstacles, while trying to record their music. Due to the circumstances and the setting of the play, the band ends up being split as Heiro gets taken away by the Nazis. Due to the Setting of this play there are many things that occur in the story which would not happen anywhere else. The extent to which the novel, The Half-Blood Blues, is a reaction to setting and society of the author is great because the novel is closely related to; the invasion of France …show more content…
Esi Edugyan’s parents are from Ghana and immigrated to Canada. When she was young, she had experienced racism first-hand. During Edugyan’s visit to Stuttgart, Germany, She Saw a lot of things that fascinated her about World War 2 and about black people during that time. At one point during her trip, she had experienced racism first-hand as some Germans started screaming and shouting at her. While in Germany Edugyan visited many places such as Concentration Camps and many other places. She learned many things about World War 2, the music in Germany, and about racism in Germany. This trip to Germany inspired her to write this book. Edugyan also being a mother of a mixed-race child shows how much the novel relates to her life and past experiences. In an interview, Edugyan said, “And now that I’ve had a child, I have been thinking about it much more and thinking about her, and I’m so grateful that we live in Canada. Imagine if she had been born in this era I’d written about, and was an Afro-German mixture. This would have been a completely different reality.” This statement shows that the novel is a reaction of her life and feelings, and shows how much the story was influenced by her …show more content…
The novel was clearly show the how difficult it was to be a person of different race in Nazi Germany as it was shown how difficult it was for the band members to go from place to place while being at the risk of getting caught by the Nazis. Even though Heiro was a great trumpet player, the circumstances of banning the broadcasting and recording of jazz in the 1930s and 1940s created another barrier for Hiero and the band that they had to go through. Esi Edugyan’s Trip to Germany got her interested in the time period of World War 2 and the history of black people in that time and also relates to her own experiences with racism. These three things show that the setting and the author’s experiences had a great impact on the