The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill
The book of Negroes is a book about slavery. [i] This is a heavy topic, and almost no one wishes to acknowledge the darkness of these pages of the history books. This is illustrated by the fact that it was published in a different name in America: “Somebody knows my name”.
Aminata Diallo, the daughter to Mamadu Diallo and Sira Kulibali, has travelled more across the water than anyone ever wanted to. In the first book we meet Aminata, now an old woman in 1802. She has joined the abolitionists cause. The abolitionists have asked Aminata, or Meena (as they can’t pronounce her name properly) to write down her life’s story. They offer to write it for her, but as Aminata says: “Nobody will write down my life but me”.
We start out in Africa, we see Aminata’s village, and we meet her parents and are even let in on a few family secrets. Both her parents teach her very useful skills. Aminata grows up learning to be a midwife, traveling along with her mother to neighbouring villages to perform their task. It is, traveling back from one of these tasks, that Aminata gets stolen. Her parents get murdered in front of her eyes, and thus her long journey away from home begins. As Lawrence is such a good writer, we can almost feel Aminata’s agony, we can smell the stench of the slave ship and can feel their anger vibrating trough the words on the pages. It is on this long walk away from home, that Aminata meets Chekura, a young boy who is made to help the slavers. He too, gets taken as a slave across the big ocean, where they “glide over the bodies of the unburied”. Aminata’s life in slavery is mostly a long, psychological torment. Her struggle is not completely physical, although we do experience what real hunger feels like. Aminata survives through a series of lucky confidences. At the end of her life, as an old woman, weary from her long journey and longing for home, she tries to find her way back to Bayo. But it is on this last journey, that Aminata learns one final lesson: “It is impossible to travel into Africa, but it is easy to travel out of it”.
The book of Negroes is a brutally honest, clear and compelling story. Once I started, I could not stop reading. We meet Aminata as an old, fragile woman who has become somewhat weary of her long life and the losses that she suffered. At first, you wonder what has made her so sad, but also what gives her that incredible strength she has inside of her. That is when she takes you with her, down the path of her history and you learn. You learn where she learned how to stay strong, you learn how she adapts and how she’s always just too busy trying to survive, making sure she lives on. We suffer alongside of her, we feel her losses, and all of this is because of the author’s clear and compelling writing style. She suffers just like any other, but the worst of it is not physical. No, most of Aminata’s struggle is mental, psychological. The loss of her family, the loss of her home, her pride, her culture, all of it, is what tortures Aminata throughout her long life. It is a book that teaches you to look differently at the slave trade, to really see it. The book forces you to open your eyes, to honestly look at all the consequences... After this book, even I finally understood.
The “Book of Negroes” is an actual document. This document contains all the descriptions of the Negroes who sailed to Nova Scottia. It is kept in the archives in the National Archives in Kew, England.
This book review was printed in the 57th issue of EmbrACE>, the faculty magazine of Erasmus School of History, culture and Education (ESHCC), autumn 2014.