The Kingdom Of This World

The chapter opens as Ti Noël, an enslaved man, and his enslaver, Monsieur Lenormand de Mézy, make purchases in Cap Français. Lenormand de Mézy is confident in Ti Noël’s ability to select a horse. Ti Noël rides the unbroken stallion into the market, where his master gets a haircut and Ti Noël thinks about the similarity between the wax heads sporting wigs in the window and the calf heads on display in the butcher shop next door. In a nearby shop are etchings: One features a king being received by a Black man seated on a throne. Ti Noël, illiterate and unable to read the inscription, asks the shopkeeper whom it depicts. He is told that it is the king of his country. Ti Noël recalls the stories about African kings told by Macandal, another enslaved man: “Kings they were, true kings, and not those sovereigns covered with someone else’s hair” (7). He and Lenormand de Mézy return home along a sea road.

Macandal is a Mandingo enslaved person from Guinea who works in the sugar mill with Ti Noël. He is well-known for his deep