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.
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