Responses to other blogs

I responded to:

Amy’s blog post #1

Harlea’s blog post #2

Vici’s blog post #3

Brandi’s blog post #4

Hope’s blog post #5

Ryan’s blog post #6

http://www.cbc.ca/mediacentre/the-book-of-negroes.html#.VIUnHYeLFUQ

This is a BBC miniseries based on Lawrence Hill’s novel that I have watched the first of 6 episodes. So far it is very good! I recommend it to all those who want a visual experience with this story.

Sixth Reading Response

At the beginning of this reading, there is a great unrest in the settlers because of the slavers taking a coffle of slaves through Freetown. Aminata makes a good point that every time that she has seen men rise up it has only ended in death and pain and nothing had changed and Daddy Moses manages to calm the settlers down. Aminata later meets with a former surgeon of a slave ship who has denounced the slave trade by the name of Alexander Falconbridge. He is willing to help her try to return to her village but that the only men that know their way inland are the slavers and she would have to go to Bance Island to meet with them. She agrees to think about the offer as she does not want to return to that island ever. After a year, she decides to accept as sometimes “a deal with the devil is better than no deal at all”.

At the fortress, she is invited in with Falconbridge and meets a man named William Armstrong. Although she is very wary she starts to talk with the two men but then grows bored with the conversation and goes to look out the window. Below, she sees pens with naked slaves inside, some motionless and others bleeding and sick. She experiences a connection through time and feels that the only moral course of action would be to help them but she can do nothing. They continue to talk and Armstrong states that he is sick of people claiming that they brand their captives. Aminata asks him to turn around and pulls down her dress to reveal her brand and asks him to look back at her. He is appalled and visibly shaken and she goes on to tell him that he has no idea of how they slaves are treated or what they are feeling. The next day she speaks to some slavers and informs them of her wish to return home and that she will trade one barrel of pure rum for it. The leader, Alassane, scoffs but tells her that they will speak when he comes back. Upon her return to Freetown, she tells John Clarkson about her plan to go inland and he tells her that she is needed in England to assist in the abolitionist movement. She is determined to go but he says that she could perhaps at least consider England. She finally barters her way inland with Alassane for three barrels of rum and they begin the journey inland. After many days of walking, she overhears the slavers say that they will sell her when they reach a certain point. She is shocked as she had trusted them to lead her to Segu but she accepts that she will never go back to her village and decides to escape. She slips out in the dead of night and walks to a creek that she follows for three days before being found by an old man. She is very sick and his village nurses her back to health. During this time she realises that she has to go to England and do all that she can to ensure that no more people are taken from her homeland to be slaves. She returns to Freetown and travels to England where she becomes a great advocate for the abolitionist cause. She meets with John Clarkson and is given an opportunity to speak to the King and Queen of England. After the meeting, she returns to her house where she sees a young, handsome woman. It turns out to be her daughter May and there is much rejoicing. May tells her mother that the Witherspoons had kept her as a house servant but she had run away and had finally found her mother that she had always remembered. The story draws to a close with Aminata talking about her book finding a publisher and that a motion is soon to be passed in Parliament about the abolishment of the slave trade. 

After all the time of Aminata wishing to go home, the fact that she never quite makes it bothers me tremendously about the ending of this book. It is a driving plot point for the entire novel and it is never achieved. As a person who sets many goals in my own life, I find it incredibly disappointing that hers is never realised. However, it is wonderful that she finally is reunited with part of her family when May finds her. It assuaged my feeling that throughout the entire book she continuously loses her family but from a realistic standpoint it seems almost too good to have actually happened. The likelihood of her reuniting with her daughter after she has sailed back to Africa and then to London is extremely small. I agree with Aminata that what the abolitionists are attempting to do feels too little but I can see why they want to go one step at a time. Having witnessed as a reader all the horrors that she lived through though, I feel that she should have pushed for more.

Fifth Reading Response

Aminata is now around 45 years old and feels that she has nothing to show for her life. No husband, no children, no true home. In the spring of 1790, a man named Thomas Peters visits the village and states that he is going to England to address the fact that none of the land that has been promised to them has been given and also to argue against the slavery that still existed in Nova Scotia. No one really believes that anything will come of this journey but the next year he returns with the news that there is to be a free black settlement on the coast of Sierra Leone where each will be granted land and rights the same as white people. Slavery is not to be lawful in the new settlement. Soon an English Lieutenant named John Clarkson arrives at the village and plans begin to form for the voyage. Aminata helps John Clarkson to make these plans a reality and in return she asks that he investigate the circumstances of her husband’s ship bound for Annapolis Royal along with being paid three shillings a pay plus room and board. She moves to Halifax to assist him and studies maps of Africa, finding Bance Island and also the name of the town Segu, a place that her father had promised to take her someday. Clarkson then gives her some terrible news: her husband’s ship had sunk during the voyage to Nova Scotia and he had been dead for years. This helps her to realise that she needs to move on and makes her decision to go on the ships to Sierra Leone. They leave in January 15, 1792 and arrive in St. George’s Bay on March 15, 1792.

Aminata is overjoyed to recognise the land, because she would not have trusted that it truly was her country if not for the shape of the lion mountain. A shadow is cast over their arrival with the realisation that there is a slave trading operation nearby, in fact it is Bance Island and it is 18 miles down the bay. The day after this realisation, a slave ship draws near the ship that Aminata is on and the captain trades with Clarkson, exchanging handshakes and goods (meat for water and oranges). The people think that Clarkson should have stopped the ship but he reasons that he does not have an army nor any weapons with which to fight him, also that he would be going against the law as slavery is still legal as much as he dislikes it. They finally disembark from the ships and begin to form their colony with the aid of John Clarkson and the English companies. They name it Freetown and they work very hard to create their new life. Aminata tries to start a friendship with the Temne women who trade with the Nova Scotians but when she asks for help to return to her village, they rebuff her, telling her she is a toubab with a black face and is not welcome in their land. At one point there is a coffle of newly caught slaves marched through their village and there is a young girl there that she gives a red scarf and words of comfort. She can do no more as the slavers push her away. Thomas Peters tries to free the slaves but is killed while trying to save a young man and the slavers load their cargo into canoes and leave untouched.

Finally a change! This chapter was very interesting to me as Aminata is finally going back to her homeland. The cocktail of emotions that she must feel upon arrival would be overwhelming. Obviously, I cannot connect directly to this but a memory did occur to me during their arrival. My family and I had flown to California for Christmas 5 years ago and I had gotten terribly sick near the end of our trip and had to fly home while in that state. Our connecting flight was missed (I forget the exact details as I was not paying much attention at the time) and we had to wait in the Calgary airport for 9 hours before we could get on another flight to Saskatoon. The feeling of relief and thankfulness that filled me when we walked in the front door of our house was very strong and I believe that Aminata felt this way only stronger when she returned to her homeland. I think it is appalling that the slavers took their coffle through Freetown as it is basically a massive slap in the face to all the people living there. They cannot do anything to assist the people in the coffle and the people that do try are killed. This is the moment that I believe Aminata starts to think about abolishing slavery in a more formal way and will lead to her travelling to England to do so.

Fourth Reading Response

This reading starts off in London where Aminata has gone to a church service with one of the abolitionist leaders and she describes it as a purgatory or boredom. She is struck by the song that they are singing as it is one of the songs that the medicine man on the slave ship used to sing and she is trapped in memories of fear and misery before she faints. The difference in treatment towards her when she awakes to when she was on that ship is astounding as they are all concerned for her welfare and eagerly trying to assist her. The story then jumps back to her past to when her and Solomon Lindo are sailing for New York on a radically different sort of ship. Aminata rebuffs Lindo’s attempts at civility, preferring to keep her distance from them. During the voyage, she is challenged to play a game of chess with a white merchant which she wins and the merchant is furious that the money that was bet upon the outcome of the game being turned over to a Negro woman. When they arrive in New York, they go straight to the Fraunces Tavern but on the cart ride there, Aminata sees Canvas Town (the free black shanty town) for the first time. She meets Sam Fraunces and she confides in him that she is not going to be a slave for much longer as she thinks he can help. A little while later, they meet in her room and they discuss the possibility of an escape. That evening, she is taken by Lindo to see a black cellist play and she is entranced by the music but disgusted to realise that he is a slave. The next morning, Lindo leaves her at the tavern with the task of writing a letter. That morning there is a riot because the Rebels fought the Tories and won. Sam tells her that the moment is ripe and that if she is going to run then she should go now as the conflict will cause Lindo to need to return home. She runs away to the woods in the north of the city where she remains for a couple of days. She witnesses and participates in the burial of an African child in a way that hopefully its spirit will find its way back home. Aminata then comes back into the city and after living with Sam Fraunces for while, sets up a home in Canvas Town. She teaches black people how to read and write in a church and makes some new friends that way. During this period, Chekura finds her again and he has run away just like her; it is another joyful reunion. Once when she is returning from teaching, she is knocked down and almost raped by a ruffian white man but a man named Lieutenant Waters saves her. He employs her midwife skills with his black girl and she begins to catch babies again, charging a pound in silver for whomever can pay that price. She becomes employed by the British to write down all the names of the black people who will be able to leave New York for Nova Scotia when the British pull out of New York in a book called the Book of Negroes.

Chekura and Aminata move into the barracks where they conceive another child. Finally the time comes when they are to board a ship but just as they are about to leave, Aminata is forced to leave the ship as there is a claim against her. She tells Chekura to stay on board as otherwise he will not be able to leave and she will find him in Nova Scotia. After spending two days in prison, she is taken to the Fraunces Tavern for a trial. Robinson Appleby is present and makes a claim that she is still his slave. She tells the justice that she had been sold to Lindo and then lies by saying he manumitted her in 1775. Sam Fraunces finds Lindo and brings him to the room where he proves that she is his and also confirms that the sale of Mamadu was arranged at the same time. The justice is appalled at the terms of the sale and Lindo explains that he regrets it but did try to send the boy to a respected gentleman. She is given back to Lindo who frees her and asks to speak to her. She does not want to let his words poison her child and refuses. She then leaves on a ship to Port Roseway and hopes desperately to find Chekura once there. Nova Scotia is a disappointment, with the same negativity and prejudice toward blacks as when she was living in New York. The land that was promised to them does not come and they are stuck living in the town they make, called Birchtown. Slave owners sailed in to town and tried to reclaim their slaves. It was a hard life and she couldn’t hear anything of Chekura. She gives birth to a daughter and names her May. While working in town in the printer shop, she meets a woman named Alverna Witherspoon whom she begins to work for as well. There is a riot in the town because of the large amount of jobless white men and Aminata takes refuge at the Witherspoon’s house. After the riot ends, she leaves her daughter with them and goes back to Birchtown to see what damage has been done. When she returns for her daughter 2 days later, there is no one home and the furniture is gone. The Witherspoons left the town with some other white families on a ship and they have taken May with them.

This reading had some ups and downs for me. I was very excited when Aminata ran away from Lindo and overjoyed to see Chekura again. It was wonderful that finally they are free to live together and not have a fear of separation hanging over them. Some parts of this reading confused me. The rape scene was so random I felt whiplash while reading it and most of the reading felt almost like filler. As it is a story of her life, it is obvious that not all of her life will be exciting however as a novel this part fell very flat. From the beginning I have found it very hard to relate to her life, having never had anything like it happen to me. But this part of the book was just a regular, if hard, life. Her experiences during this section of the book are not much different to household servants or just regular people’s lives. White people living in England at this time were not all wealthy merchants and they had to work just as she did. In fact, many white people had a much tougher life than she did. For example, when the pioneers were driving out across the Wild West in covered wagons with only a few possessions and their families, they had much less than Aminata at this point in the book. She is no longer a slave and as such I viewed her problems during this section with a different eye. At the end of the reading when her child is taken from her yet again I felt sad but also a bit exasperated. Must she lose family members in each reading? It is repetitive and although it is a terrible tragedy, it almost feels excessive from a novel standpoint, almost like oh we need a new tragedy now to stop this from being boring.. hmmmm HOW ABOUT WE TAKE AWAY HER FAMILY AGAIN? I hope that the next reading has something that changes up the pattern.

 

Third Reading Response

We left Aminata just after she had been raped by Master Appleby and Happy jack had carried her back to Georgia’s cabin. Georgia gives Aminata a drink of herbs that makes her have a bleeding, ensuring that she will not become pregnant with his child. Two years pass and Aminata continues to try to discover a way off the plantation and back to her home with no results. She learns how to read and write very well and discovers an escape from her reality in reading. Aminata falls in love with Chekura and she becomes pregnant with his child, a fact that she is very proud of. A man named Solomon Lindo visits the plantation, along with another named William King. Lindo is very interested in Aminata and tricks her into revealing her ability to read. He keeps her secret though, stating he could use a girl like her. William King is left alone with her and she learns that she was sold from Bance Island in Guinea. He then tries to rape her but is interrupted before he can actually do the deed. Solomon Lindo offers to buy Aminata but Appleby declines, as she is a good worker and provides him a great deal of profit. Soon after, he leaves for the winter months.  While he is away, Chekura and Aminata get married in August of that year by “jumping the broom” and they have a wonderful night, falling asleep in each others arms.

However, when he returns in the spring, he learns about her pregnancy and humiliates her, burning all her possessions and shaving off her hair. In March of 1761, she gives birth to her son, naming him Mamadu after her father. She hopes that Chekura will come to see his son that day but he only comes 14 days later because the overseer on his plantation is trying to stop the midnight trading and secret journeys of the slaves. The joy that the child brings is short lived however because 10 months later, Appleby steals the boy from her and sells him away. Aminata becomes lifeless and after much frustration, Appleby sells her to Solomon Lindo. She regains her life as a house servant to the Lindo’s along with another girl named Dolly, but she is now tinted with a bitterness that was not present before. She works there for 13 years and she grows to like Dolly and Mrs. Lindo as much as she had liked Georgia. She is taught to read and write better and how to use currency. Her midwife skills are also utilised as she is hired out to catch babies. The extra money she makes from this she is allowed to keep as long as she pays Mr. Lindo 10 shillings per week. After smallpox kills Dolly, her son Samuel, Mrs. Lindo, and her son David, Mr. Lindo neglects Aminata before he leaves to New York for a time and she is left to deal with her grief with his abusive sister in charge. One night, she is woken by Chekura who has finally found her. He explains that his master had sent him to a plantation in Georgia before Mamadu had even been stolen and after he had returned to his plantation, he had been unable to leave and come to visit her even though he know that she was in Charles Town. She learns from him that Lindo had been implicit in the sale of her son and that her son had died from smallpox a year after he had been sold. He has to leave the next morning and the parting is very sad, not knowing if they will ever see one another again. Lindo returns and she accuses him of what he has done and their partnership comes to an end, with both shunning the other. After many months of this, he decides to try to repair their relationship and takes her to New York with him.

The main theme of the first part of this reading is that nothing belongs to a slave. I felt such shame for Aminata when Appleby humiliated her in front of the entire plantation and it was amazing of her to stand up to him at the end and walk away with her head held high. She has such a strength of character that I admire greatly. I do not think that it was weak of her to fall into such an extreme depression after she lost Mamadu. She has lost so much in her life and then she lost the most important thing in her life, something that was a part of her. She lost her childhood family to the slavers and then she lost her own family to slavery. When she lives with the Lindo’s, she begins to love again, loving her friend Dolly and even Mrs. Lindo and both of their children. These people are then ripped from her life again, making it the third time that she has lost a family (Note: A family does not have to be related by blood in my opinion. If people love each other and act as family then they are a family.) This loss of family is experienced by everyone who lives, although on a much smaller scale. During my life, both of my great grandmothers have passed on and their funerals were very important moments in my life. However, that net of support that I received from the rest of my family and gave in turn, is something that Aminata did not have because each time she loses her family, she loses absolutely everyone she cares about.

“There but for the grace of God go I.”

Second Reading Response

This reading starts off again in London where an older Aminata is speaking with a group of Abolitionists. They want to start at the beginning and first abolish the slave trade and they want her to support what they are doing. However, she does not want to just start at the beginning, as she says “Even if you destroy every slave ship, what remains of the men and women already in bondage? Of the children who were born to them but belong to others?” She wants to destroy slavery in its entirety. They do not hear her story yet but once they do, once they read her story they will understand and then she believes she will have lived for a reason. Going back to where the last reading left off, the slaves are led onto an island and put inside a barricade. They are all weak and sick, some more so than others. Aminata is very sick and unaccustomed to the colder climate. Twice daily they are given food and water in buckets, the food being mostly yams and rice with bits of meat mixed in. Biton and Chekura help feed Aminata when she is too weak to walk and Fomba brings her water but she remains in a very ill state. After a while to allow the slaves to recover, a ship comes to the island and they are led onto that ship which takes them to the mainland. As they are leaving, Aminata witnesses another slave ship arriving at the island that she smells before seeing and hopes that she will never have to witness their suffering. Once on the mainland, they are taken to auction where the healthy slaves are sold quite quickly. The old and sick slaves are left and they are lined up. There is a free for all where toubab men grab whatever they want. Fomba and Aminata are taken together and led to a cart that two other slaves are tied to. They are then forced to march for days. They do not get food or water during the day, nor are they allowed to stop to relieve themselves. Finally, they arrive on Robinson Appleby’s indigo plantation where a woman rescues her from another inspection. This woman nurses her back to health and introduces herself as Georgia. The overseer on the plantation is named Mamed and he is also a black man. Aminata is confused that although there is no white men in sight, still no one attempts to escape. Georgia teaches Aminata how to speak the language Gullah, which the Negroes use to speak to each other, and a form of English which they use to speak to white men, or buckra as the Negroes say. Aminata is taught how to make indigo mud properly and also helps Georgia with catching babies. After an incident when Aminata drops a sack of indigo mud, Mamed begins to teach her to read and write in secrecy. After their first lesson, Georgia tells her that Chekura had come by and she is overjoyed but sad that she missed his visit. He begins to visit regularly and it is great joy for Aminata to see him. At the end of the reading, Master Appleby returns to the island and takes Aminata into the big house. He rages at her for having “a boy sniffing after her” and then he rapes her.

This is an important chapter because Aminata realises that she is not going to get back to her homeland, at least for a long time, and that to survive in this land, she has to learn as much as she can about the buckra and their ways. She also finds a mother figure in Georgia which is the most important part of this section in my opinion. Without this figure in her life, she would have been lost and probably would have died. Georgia gives her a purpose for her life and teaches her how to speak their language, an imperative part of living on a plantation. Without the language barrier she begins to feel more at home and regains her will. When Mamed starts to teach her how to read and write, she begins to pass from just another slave to an intelligent being. It is terribly dangerous for her to have this knowledge but to achieve her goal of going home, she needs to have this knowledge. The rape scene at the end of this book was shocking as most of this section had a happier tone. It just goes to show how much slaves were the property of their owners and that they can do anything to their property without repercussion. It is scary to me to think about how many slave owners did this to their slaves while being married and thinking that it was completely alright. I am so fortunate to be born into a society where rape is a major crime and that I can avoid any scenario like this one.

First Reading Response

Let us just take a second and step back and look at the title of this novel. The Book of Negroes. What an evocative and politically charged statement that is. One can assume that this will be a very meaningful, strong story and will expand the worldview of anyone who decides to crack open its pages.

The story that the novel revolves around is based on factual events that occurred during the black slave trade of the 18th century. We begin the story with the protagonist, an old black woman named Aminata Diallo, reflecting on her ability to survive in spite of all odds. She lovingly describes her young life when she was free and remembers her family, informing us that despite the many years that have passed since she last saw them, she still misses them and wishes they could be there with her. She explains how she is no longer beautiful but for her hands which are dark and smooth (It occurred to the reader at this point that her mind must also very beautiful, full of both sadness and joy). Then comes a very strong warning to distrust the colour pink in all its innocence. The path of the sunset, pink across the water, lighting the path of a slave ship could never be a thing of beauty. After this short introduction, she takes us back to her childhood in a village named Bayo, with her Mama, a Bamana, and her Papa, a Fula. Her papa is the only one in her village to have a copy of the Qur’an and to know how to read and write. As a girl, she is not supposed to cultivate her mind with reading but she has a fascination with language and hopes that her father will teach her someday. She speaks of how her mother and father met and describes life in the village. The characters Fomba (a woloso or second generation slave) and Fanta (the chief’s 4th wife, a mean spirited woman) are introduced. Aminata assists her mother with catching babies and one time they are called out to another village. On their way home, they are ambushed by kidnappers who kill her mother and knock down Fomba, capturing Aminata and him. They force her to walk back to her village where her father sees her and tries to rescue her, stabbing one of the captors and slashing another with a knife, but he is shot in the chest and dies in front of Aminata. She is forced to walk for 3 months in a coffle of captives including Fomba and Fanta from her village in the interior of Africa all the way to to the Atlantic coast.

During this time, she has her period for the first time and is even more humiliated as the blood just drips down her legs, all clothes being taken from the captives. Some people in villages they pass give food and some clothing to the captives but Aminata is bewildered that they won’t do anything more, like try to free them. One of the captors is a young man named Chekura and she learns that he is a slave to the captors. He brings Aminata food and advice and they become friends, although begrudgingly at first on Aminata’s part as she sees him as a captor. Once they reach the coast, they are thrown in pens and branded before being herded onto a slave ship that reeks of the despair and sickness of the previous slave passengers. Aminata’s ability to speak both of her parent’s languages serves her well and she is granted special favours by the toubab (white men), especially the medicine man during the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. The other slaves have to lay in their own feces and dirt in the hold of the ship, only being let out for fresh air for short periods of time. During the voyage, the slaves try to revolt but it only ends in more blood being spilled before they are chained and put back down below.

Aminata is horrified by the disposal of bodies by just throwing them overboard as she believes that their spirits will never find their way home. At the end of this reading, Aminata has lost everything and is on the verge of dying from sickness and exposure. Yet somehow she retains her sanity and a hope that perhaps in this new land she will keep living.

This section was very difficult for me to read. The horror that she experiences with the murder of both her parents is exacerbated by the suddenness of the crime. She lived a happy free life and then within the span of a couple of hours, her family is dead and she is a slave, stripped of all her dignity and modesty. It is even more shocking as she is 11 years old. I cannot even begin to fathom what she went through. When I was 11 years old, my biggest problems were forgetting to do a chore or not doing well on a math test. The most impressive part to me is how the thought of despair does not even cross her mind. Even after all that she goes through, even being branded and stepping on a naked rotting corpse, she retains her hope that someday in the future she will be free. Another part of the reading that was exceptionally difficult for me to read pertained to Fanta. She had completely lost all of her hope and was consumed with despair and it twisted her mind. When she kills her baby, I was shocked and felt sickened but when she steals Sanu’s baby and throws it overboard I had to take a moment and put the book down. A mother’s love for her child is the strongest bond and for Fanta to completely disregard that and kill another woman’s child just to assuage her own despair is appalling. I could never imagine feeling that level of despair.

“Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted. [For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789]”

― Benjamin Franklin, Writings