ISP Blog Post #6

Looking at The Book of Negroes from a post-colonial point of view gave me the most insight into the book. Slavery is the main focus of this novel, which makes it easy to look through a post-colonial lens. As I said in my first ISP blog post, “Post colonialism examines the effects of the conquering nation on the local culture; exploring how a local culture is first stripped, then the dominant culture is imposed on the locals and finally how the local culture is forever impacted and changed by the exposure to the dominant culture”, which is a basic overview of the plot of this novel. Aminata goes through each of those stages and without looking at the novel from that point of view you might miss those connections between the events in Aminata’s life.

Without looking at The Book of Negroes from a post-colonial point of view I would never have known how Aminata never felt accepted by her own people. I would only have seen that slaves hated being taken from their homeland and thought they only wanted to be returned. But the reality is that they were not accepted anywhere. Even when Aminata went back to Africa she was never accepted. Fatima and the slave traders that take her back to Bayo show Aminata and the readers that she is not accepted in her homeland. They do not believe that she is an African no matter what she says; she is “toubab with the black face” (Chapter 4).

Aminata grows up facing rejection; she learns that white people only want her to use her talents. No one cares about her, they only care what she can do for them. i.e. working in fields, catching babies, reading and writing, etc. She also cannot escape the dangers of slavery even when she has returned “home” and the African’s believe she is tainted by the Toubab.

I would definitely use Fatima as an example; I would also use the slave traders that pretend to take Aminata to Bayo. I think those are great examples because Fatima shows that the "true" African believe the Nova Scotian's to be foreigners. The Slave traders are a good example because they show that Aminata is not safe even when she is back in Africa, she narrowly escapes repeating the cycle of slavery. I would also show that Aminata has been rejected by people all her life. The white people reject the Negroes and treat them as property instead of human beings. She is only useful to them when they can exploit her skills for their benefits.

A first draft of my thesis would be: Without a post-colonial look at The Book of Negroes the rejection of Negroes in their homeland would not be understood. Aminata gives us that insight and I think that rejection is the reason she decides to go England to help the cause to end slavery. She has experienced the effects of rejection in all forms and she doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she did, so she accepts Clarkson’s offer to help end that circle of hate.

ISP Blog Post #5: Archetypal look at The Book of Negroes

There are many archetypal characters and events in The Book of Negroes. Aminata Diallo is the hero, Georgia is the great mother, Daddy Moses is the wise old man, and Lindo is the fox or trickster. Georgia is the great mother to Aminata because she saved her from being sold and took care of her on Appleby’s indigo plantation (book two).  Georgia saved her from getting diseases; she helped her avoid being alone with Appleby so he didn’t rape her, which in the end she could not save Aminata from, and she guides Aminata in the ways of living as a slave in America. Daddy Moses is the wise old man because he really is a wise old man. Even though he is a preacher of Christian faith and Aminata is Muslim, she becomes close to him because he is a kind soul. He treats her with kindness and is one of the exceptions to the idea that kindness always comes with a price. I think he teaches Aminata this lesson and she then uses that lesson when she is the wise old woman, teaching other young people like she was taught.

Appleby would be the obvious choice for the archetype of the fox/trickster but I think Soloman Lindo is more of a trickster to Aminata’s hero. Appleby is very proud of the fact that he is a slave owner; he is openly racist and hateful, where Lindo is shyer about his faults. Lindo is not truthful about what he is, he owns slaves but does not call them slaves to save his own dignity (book two), he helps to trade Aminata’s baby secretly (book two) and then denies all accusations (book three) and he pretends to be a gentleman when he is just as bad as Appleby. 

 The book starts off with in Aminata being in the familiar environment of her home village with her family and community. She grows up until she is eleven in this great learning and caring atmosphere. Her parents love her, she is taught to pray the way her father does, she learns all the ways of the tribe and she is getting ready to become the chief’s next wife (book one). Her parents give her the skills, in this loving environment, which will later save her life in a more hostile environment. She begins her internal journey from innocence to experience. When she is taken away from her village she begins her descent into danger (book one). As she walks further and further from her family and village the more things become unfamiliar to her. She is stolen from that loving environment and thrown into the harsh confines of slavery.

Danger is definitely something that Aminata faced on a daily basis. Danger of disease, the slave traders, other captives, and animals in the jungle, and that’s just her first journey to the shores of Africa! She faces disease throughout the whole book, she faces captors and captives throughout most of the novel, I think the danger that she faces the most is hatred. Hatred is rampant throughout this novel. Kindness is found but not often and it almost always comes with a price. Aminata has to face the unkindness of the slave traders on her way to Bance Island as well as on the ship to America (book one). She faces unkindness when she lives on Appleby’s farm, mostly from Master Appleby (book two). Her husband is kept from her and her babies are stolen from her (book two and three). Aminata travels the world over but she can never escape the hatred that follows her people. She is downcast because of the colour of her skin and she can’t escape it even when she gets back to her homeland. The Africans see her as tainted somehow because she lived in America for so many years and they do not believe she is a true African like they are (book four). She fights off the demons that plague her, never letting fear and hatred overcome her.

Aminata’s return home is really her return home. She goes back to Africa with John Clarkson and the other Nova Scotians (book four). She completes the journey from innocence to experience by coming full circle and returning to her homeland. I think that every novel has some connection to archetypes because it is the general flow of a story. If the main character didn’t go through anything tragic and overcome different aspects of their life then no one would want to read the book. Archetypes make the story relatable because everyone has a mother figure, a father figure, and a trickster or antagonist. No one’s life is perfect, everyone has bad things happen to them and the best books teach us that we can’t let those bad things defeat us. I don’t think that Lawrence Hill wrote The Book of Negroes through an archetypal lens but I think that every story has basically all the same elements. Aminata’s story becomes more relatable as the archetypes are introduced to us. The reader probably has never been through slavery, but they understand a slave’s point of view because they can relate to her troubles.

ISP Blog Post #4- Post Colonial look at The Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes is told from a black woman’s point of view and not from a slave owner’s perspective. We are not only getting the story from a black slave, but she is also a female, both of which give the story to us from a different critical lens than that of the person in power from the dominant culture. Aminata has been stripped of her culture. She was not allowed to pray when she was first taken, she was taught English and told she was not allowed to speak her own languages, Appleby told her her hair was wool instead of hair, she was not allowed to wear African garb, and she had to eat American/British food.  Aminata was also taught the way of the British and the American, using money instead of trade and being owned and not free.

Being back in Africa did not change anything for Aminata. All the Nova Scotia Negroes believed that “none of [them] are truly free, until [they] go back to [their] land” but when they get there it is not as they expected. Aminata did not understand all the ways of Africa because she had become so used to the way that things happened in America. When she reached Africa she met King Jimmy and she said; “It seemed absurd that my first conversation as an adult with an African in my own homeland should take place in English”(Lawrence, . Even the Africans who lived in Africa were changed by European culture.

When Aminata meets Fatima we see that even though she is from Africa the Africans who have lived their whole lives there believe that she is a foreigner; “‘You call me toubab? Did you not hear my story about my husband and my children? I am born in this land.’  ‘That is a story, and a very good one. And I will tell you a story too, if you want one. But you are not asking for a story now. You are asking about my land.’ ‘I am asking about my land. The land where I was born.’ ‘You have the face of someone born in this land, but you come with the toubab. You are a toubab with the black face.’” Even when Aminata is back in her homeland she is still seen as a foreigner.

In Sierra Leone, she is still not completely free from white people. The British govern Freetown and they help the Negroes by sending them supplies and food provisions. The Negroes are heavily affected when the British stop sending provisions so often, and they are almost back in the situation they were in in Nova Scotia. Even when they are in their homeland, they cannot live by their own rules and govern themselves. They still depend on the British to aid them and guide them so that Freetown “prospers” as John Clarkson explains. The book of Negroes looks at a minority in every way possible.

Post colonialism examines the effects of the conquering nation on the local culture; exploring how a local culture is first stripped, then the dominant culture is imposed on the locals and finally how the local culture is forever impacted and changed by the exposure to the dominant culture. The Book of Negroes examines all of these stages through Aminata’s story.  It looks at how Aminata was removed from her home and culture, indoctrinated into the ways of the slave world and then returned to Africa to be faced with how she and her homeland were forever changed because of the European colonization and the slave trade.

ISP Blog Post: Major Issues Examined

I really looked at the definition and use of injustice and found that it is a major issue in The Book of Negroes. “Something unfair that happens, often in violation of a basic human right” is the way that vocabulary.com defines injustice. Some examples of injustices of the world are poverty, gender equality, orphans, racism, abuse, and war. Each one of those injustices that I just listed, some more than others, are explored in this novel.

Aminata is judged so often based only on the colour of her skin. Hill shows the injustice when Aminata is almost raped by a white man in the street. Aminata Diallo is probably one of the most educated people and only because of her skin colour she doesn’t get any of the opportunities that a white person does. The only reason that she cannot climb the ladder to a better life is because her skin is the “wrong” colour. Her problem is that not only is she just black, she is also a woman. Women are disregarded as people and only seen as toys to be played with by most of the men, with the exception of Chekura.

Hill also shows us injustice when he brings in the characters of Lieutenant Waters and Rosetta. They come into the story because Lieutenant Waters wants Aminata to help Rosetta have her baby. It is revealed to us that Rosetta believes Waters loves her, but as outsiders we can see that he cannot lover her only because she is black. He asks Rosetta to leave with the baby so that no one, that he would deem respectable, can ever find out he had a child be a black woman. Rosetta’s character as an individual brings to light yet another injustice; she is a thirteen year old prostitute. She is forced into this form of work because she cannot do anything else and she has no one to take care of her. She then believes that Lieutenant Waters loves her because he takes care of her.

The character of Miss Betty emphasizes another injustice, that of the fact that to be free in New York was just as bad as being a slave in New York. We see that being a slave was almost better, as Miss Betty points out; at least she has clothes on her back, food in her belly and a roof over her head. The people living in Canvas Town have a harder life than if they were still slaves. This seems almost opposite to the way that we think of history. When slaves were freed they were all happier, but the white men controlled so much that even when they didn’t have any actual control over the Negroes; they were still a huge influence on their lives. Miss Betty’s death highlights that influence, because even the “freed” slaves must carry their dead deep into the forest to bury them.

Obviously slavery is a huge issue in The Book of Negroes but I think that slavery is only the tip of a huge iceberg. Aminata has so many more problems than just being a slave, if that were the only problem when she became free the story would have ended. I love how Hill shows us that there is more to slavery than we think at first glance. I love the way that he explains where these terrible actions and beliefs come from, without have to spell it out for us. Everyone is able to see different things in this book because he is guiding us to make our own discoveries. Injustice is the biggest problem that I see.

ISP Blog Post #2: The Book of Negroes from a Feminist Perspective

            In this second part of the book we see that men are the stronger sex and overpower the women. Hill creates irony in the fact that men were considered superior because he has showed many times that men need not only women but Aminata specifically. Hill also shows that women are just as capable; if not more capable than men because the strong and powerful characters that have influenced Aminata’s life so far are all women. Aminata’s mother and Fanta were the strong women in the first fifth, and Georgia is in this second part.

We also see that Aminata, a woman, is overcoming the slavery of white men. Even though she is still a slave in this part we see that she is trying to rebel as much as she can, because she gets married and has a baby, without Appleby’s permission. She also begins to learn, reading and writing skills so that when she is free she has the possibility for a better life, because she is educated. We don’t just see that women are strong, we also see that men are cruel. We see how terrible the men were to women in these times when Appleby rapes Aminata, when William King tries to rape her, when Appleby shaves Aminata’s hair and when he sells her baby. We now see the cruelty that Aminata has to face and it emphasizes the fact that she is a strong woman to overcome all this brutality.  Most white women were never educated and Aminata being a slave put her at a disadvantage in the first place but slave women would never have been educated, but Aminata’s positive spirit leads her to someone who will teach her all she is willing to learn.

We see that she is rewarded for rebelling against the oppression. She never uses violence or force; she does quiet things that empower herself and others. I decided to use the feminist theory to analyze the Book of Negroes because it is written from a woman’s perspective. I think that Hill did a great job with writing a strong female character. Aminata is a great woman already in the novel, she has been a great woman since she was little. She craves her freedom but she never sinks to the level of her oppressors. She only inspires the people around her to be better. She never allows herself to become a negative source of energy. I love this novel so far because Aminata, despite everything she has been through, is such a positive source to be reckoned with.

 Hill really illustrates that women are the heroes of this story, we see that when Georgia saves Aminata from the white men trying to sell her. Right from the very beginning we see that women are the source of life and men need women only to continue their line, for pleasure and to show other women that because they hold power over one, they can hold power over any women they want. That is why Hill chose to include the rape scenes and the reason that Appleby sells Aminata’s child. Men see that she is strong and they are asserting their power over her. Hill balances that beautifully with the character of Chekura, who treats Aminata and women in general the way that a true man should. I think that, by adding Chekura to the story, Hill was also trying to show that many people believed that black people were different or scary in some way but they really are just people. The same as white people, there is no difference. Other than the fact that Chekura doesn’t feel the need to assert his manhood in front of Aminata, he just treats her like a person with kindness and respect. Hill’s choice to make Aminata the lowest possible form of being, as a black woman slave, was a great choice because her story is all the more amazing when she overcomes the oppression she faces. 

ISP Blog Post- The Book of Negroes

While reading The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill, I have really connected with Aminata Diallo the main character. She is a very strong and courageous little girl who was taken from her village in Africa. She shows extreme resilience to the horrors that surround her. I watched the mini-series when it was on TV and I loved it. I thought it was such an interesting story and I loved Aminata’s character. I found in the mini-series and now in the book that she is a very compelling character with an amazing story.

The beginning of the book is all about her childhood and how she lives with her mother and father in their village. Her mother “catches babies” as they say in the book but she is a midwife to our way of thinking. She teaches Aminata her trade when she is very young. I think that being a part of bringing life into the world is what makes Aminata so strong. She sees the essence of life at the beginning of the book but as it continues she begins to see the essence of death. I think that the biggest turning points for her where when she saw the decaying body and when a brand new mother kills her baby. I love the fact that she is telling her story from a child’s point of view. We get to see things as they truly are through the innocent eyes of a child instead of the tainted view of an adult. The story would be very different from an adult character’s point of view.

I think that Fanta, the mother who killed her baby, was included in the novel to demonstrate the difference between adulthood and childhood. Aminata’s mind is more open to ways of surviving. She knows who she is and she will not sway her beliefs but she is able to see and do what she needs to to stay alive. Fanta knows who she is and will not sway her beliefs but she cannot adapt to her surroundings. The way that Aminata was brought up in Africa really sets the tone for the whole book. She sees her capture as something that she has to overcome to get back to her homeland. Adults could only see the oppression from the white people.

Aminata also has the added bonus of knowledge and communication skills which make her valuable to the “toubab” or white men. We see that Aminata will not let these white men touch her inappropriately but she does not resort to the violence that others do to prevent such things. I love the relationship between Fanta and Aminata. I think that it bring a lot of depth to the story, not only through the fact that they are the adult perspective and the child perspective but we also get to see the old ties between them effect how they act on their voyage and we see the different effects that life altering events can have on different age groups. Fanta and Aminata do not have a good relationship and then when we come to find out that Aminata would have been the next wife to the chief of their village, we understand that Fanta does not want her husband to have to have another younger wife. Fanta is pregnant and gives birth when she is on the slave trader ship, as I mentioned earlier she ends up killing her baby. I think that she does this because she doesn't want it living through the horrors that she has to but also because it is a reminder of the life that she lost.

I have loved the first fifth of this book so far. I found it very engaging and I never felt bored with anything that was happening. I am very excited to read the rest, even though I know what happens because I say the mini-series it has been very interesting to read. I get to see a more in depth version of the story now, which I am very excited about. 

Writing

I am fairly good at writing essays because of the formulas that can be used. I think that it is pretty easy to follow but I have a lot of trouble with the connecting sentences. I have a lot of trouble connecting my ideas to each other and to the real world. Hooks at the beginning of essays are my worst nightmare. I always try to fully develop my idea before I begin writing my essay so the connections are clearer. It is really hard for me to connect to things beyond just the book and what is written. Transitions are hard to create because they are not a specific idea to be presented, but hey have to be there for the essay to flow and make sense. I would really like to get better are connecting things because that is what makes the essay interesting. Without the connections it is just a skeleton of ideas. Some things that I already do and could do more are really fleshing out all of my ideas before I start writing the actual essay, brainstorming and creating a web of ideas with arrows that connect. Some of my strengths include creating a thesis statement, and then following the essay structure. I have worked really hard to learn a good essay structure but in doing so I stopped working on my transition sentences and I am not as good at those anymore. I am also good at making sure I work harder on the things that I am not as good at. I make sure that the things I don’t like doing and the things I am not good at are the things that I focus on more. I don’t like writing essays but I always work on my weaknesses.