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.
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