Tag: fiction

It’s been so many years since I read a book where every single word seemed to matter. The first time I picked up “The Book of Negroes,” I read for 5 hours straight and when I put it down, I was left with feelings of disgust, sadness, admiration and love all at the same time. It was a beautiful piece of art, yet it was utterly painful to read at times.

The first bit of the story takes place around the year 1750 when eleven-year-old Aminata Diallo is stolen from her African village in Bayo. She is sent across the ocean to America where she is sold into slavery on a South Carolina indigo plantation. Aminata slowly adjusts to plantation life in the Carolinas and she experiences sickening violence at the hands of the man who owns her. 

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Perhaps it’s because I’m a Christian or perhaps it’s because of the way I was raised, but when I read this story, I instantly felt a type of pain I’ve never felt before. I had endless questions going through my mind… How can a person just take someone else and throw them overboard as if they were some old rag? Since when did human beings get so cruel with each other? This type of ruthlessness isn’t an accident. How can this even be justified? How can we explain these acts of sheer inhumanity and what does that even say about us, humans? Why are we capable of this kind of violence? 

As a Christian I’ve always believed that every human being, woman, or man, black or white, is made in God’s image. All people were created equal by God’s love and are free, destined to live a life of peace. All people are supposed to be accorded the same freedom and dignity. Slavery was, with no doubt, considered a sin to me. 

As a child, my parents also always enforced respect. Respect meant that you were to accept somebody for who they were, even when they were different from you or when you didn’t agree with them. Respect was needed to show others that you appreciated their knowledge and wisdom. My mother would tell me that this simple concept is one of the many things that lives on after we die.

Respect will never be forgotten, she would say.

Stealing children from their homes, starving them, beating them, forcing them to work for you and raping them breaks every moral I was ever taught to have. There is no respect there. There is not even a bit of shame or mercy. I believe this is what made reading “The Book of Negroes” so difficult for me. I just couldn’t understand that all of this torturing was just because of the colour of someone’s skin. It seemed unreal.

Interestingly though, I’ve come to feel very connected to Aminata. It might be because my mom also delivers babies, like hers did, or perhaps it’s the fact that both of us love languages or that her parents taught her the same things my parents taught me, but I feel so much love toward her.

There was a part in the book where her father said to her, “You must learn to respect,” and Aminata responded with “But I do not respect her.” Her father replied with,

“Then you must learn to hide your disrespect” (Hill 21). 

I had the exact same conversation with my parents once and I understood Aminata’s way of thinking. She was always direct and loved to ask questions. However Aminata learned quickly to hide many of her feelings. If she had not, she would not have been able to survive the journey. She understood that if she disobeyed white people, she would be punished or even killed. I think this is why my parents taught me this. I came to realize that you must respect not only out of pure kindness, but with the knowledge that it may determine your safety.

Also when Aminata’s father told her,

“Fear no man and come to know him” (57),

this reminded me of how my mom used to tell me that there isn’t enough time in our lives to fear. She always would teach me to look at everything and everyone as if they were a closed book, waiting to be opened.

But what I think I loved the most about this first part of the story is that Aminata was represented as a character who never wallowed in self-pity – no matter what she endured. Lawrence Hill did not make the Negroes seem defenseless. He did not make them the “victims” in this book, but rather the “survivors.” Throughout the pages of this novel, Hill revealed himself to be a tenderhearted and compassionate author with pure disgust for barbarity. He is the type of person to see hope and freedom where others would only see loss and captivity. I loved his view on the world since I’m also the type of person to see the glass as being half full. I accept that there will always be disappointment, but I’m also the person who never loses hope. Hill shows this mentality when Aminata arrives in America and sees the slave auctioning and it makes me appreciate his writing even more. She says, “I vowed not to let the noises of the city drown out their voices or rob me of my past. It was less painful to forget, but I would look and I would remember” (190). Aminata wanted to remember everything so that she could later tell her story. This was definitely not easy for her, but she decided that she would be strong and fight. Hill’s idea to create such a brave character made me gain so much admiration toward him.

I also loved the descriptive way in which Hill wrote. He used so many metaphors and other literary devices in order to describe the story. For example, Aminata’s father tells her, “Words fly on wild winds from the mouths of sly people” (99). I found this effective since it really makes you imagine the words being thrown around by the winds and it portrays how sometimes you just can’t escape being affected by what others say.

I also liked how he was willing to use degrading language in his book even though it seemed to go against his original objective of criticizing slavery. For example, Aminata’s owner in South Carolina, Robinson Appleby, rapes her and then calls her “African whore” (161). Hill uses many other very offensive terms in the novel and he does so in a way that somehow seems to reverse its negative effect. He uses this harsh language at just the right times so that instead of the Africans appearing victimized, all the reader can do is see how inhumane and disgusting the slave traders were. This style is also effective because it makes the story more real. It makes you feel as if you’re first-hand experiencing everything since none of the brutality seems to be hidden from you.

Reading this book really showed me that I’m an obsessive reader. I’m such a curious person that whenever I feel like I don’t know enough about something, I get an urge to look it up. Two weeks ago, my family drove to Pennsylvania and I had planned to read the book in the car, but halfway down the first page, I already wanted to look something up. I had so many questions about abolitionists, indigo plantations and the Great Smallpox Epidemic. I discovered that this, in a way, is my weakness as a reader since I get distracted so much.

But, I mean… I guess you could also call my curiosity a strength since it makes me analyze everything so carefully. It lets me really enjoy the text and make many predictions as I read along. For example, I remember being stuck on this one thing Aminata said at the very beginning. She said, “Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn’t wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her” (4). I reread this so many times since I just loved how it was written. This foreshadowed that she would be raped and it got me thinking about how and when it would happen. I had predicted it would be later on in the book by her owner once she was sold into slavery, but nevertheless I felt a bit helpless when I read it.

Overall, I just want to say that this is a beautiful and insightful novel and that I hope you all get a chance to read it one day.

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