I finished The Book of Negroes a couple of days ago, and here are my
thoughts on it. And I am sorry there hasn't been much on the blog lately, I'm a lazy butt.
Plot
The book follows Aminata
Diallo from her childhood in Africa to her old age in England. Aminata is a
freeborn Muslim who grows up with her mother and father in Bayo somewhere in
today’s Guinea. She is taught by her mother to be a midwife and she is taught
to read and write some Arabic by her dad. When Aminata is 11 her village is
razed by slavers, both her parents die and she, along with the survivors of her
village, is taken to the coast, I think in Sierra Leone, and from there sailed
to North Carolina. The rest of the book is about her working as a slave in
Charleston, then as a servant further north, before she runs away in New York
and takes more control over her life.
Thoughts
It was an astounding
read. It’s very hard to understand the horrors of slavery, because I mostly
hear numbers and some descriptions, and I don’t really get it. And after a
while I feel sort of numb. I always find it easier I guess, to grasp the true
horror when I read the account of one person, or watch a movie about one person
say.
This book follows
Aminata, and it’s told in first person so you get all of her thoughts and
feelings. It’s just awful to hear about the things she goes through. She is
basically raped as a form of punishment, she is beaten, her head is shaved and
she has all her possessions taken away. She is continually betrayed by her
owners and bosses and by people she thought she could trust.
It was interesting to
see the white western world through the eyes of an African Muslim. To see how
weird our habits seem to people who aren’t from there. Something else I found
interesting was how when people referred to Aminata’s homeland as Guinea she
was just confused, because obviously they don’t use European names for their
homeland. It was interesting to see how European culture and languages
saturated Africa (also a name Europeans came up with), and took Africa from her
people.
The book is very frank
and blunt in its descriptions of everything that happens to her. Everything is
so cold and so cruel and it made me cry and it felt sort of useless. It felt
like the world was the worst place to exist and that all white people suck.
They don’t obviously, but for a while it felt like that. Even the abolitionists
were using these really bullshit justifications for why slavery had somehow
helped Aminata. The wife of one abolitionist saying that since Aminata had been
a slave she could read and write, several languages. And all I could think was…
was that worth getting raped, beaten, betrayed, abandoned and crushed? Also,
who ever said Aminata wanted to go to the States and read English and record
the names of countless slaves? Maybe she just wanted to live her life? It
really annoyed me. And I realize that an abolitionist wants to fight against
slavery, and probably feel a need to justify their lives now that they want to
help these people. Because we don’t want to be in the wrong, we want to be right
and we don’t want to admit that we’ve done something monstrous. But it pissed
me off.
I thought the resolution
with Aminata and May felt a bit convenient, but it was also believable enough
for me to just go, yeah okay. It was nice to have something nice happening for
her. So while it’s a bit convenient I liked it. I liked the way it was told, I
liked that it made me feel like throwing up and it made me hate everything,
because you should always examine how you think and feel, so that’s good.
Finally
I really liked it. I
thought it was interesting, and thought provoking and it was heart breaking,
and beautiful. It was amazing.