Have you read this book yet? It still stands in the list of my favourites of all time.
Based on a true story, at the age of 11, Aminata Diallo is kidnapped from her African village and brought to South Carolina to work as a slave. She eventually wins her freedom and becomes a force in the abolitionist movement in Britain, but only after decades of struggle and adversity.
Hill's novel is a joy and a heartbreak to read. Here is a small excerpt from the book:
"I have escaped violent endings even as they have surrounded me. But I never had the privilege of holding onto my children, living with them, raising them the way my own parents raised me for ten or eleven years, until all of our lives were torn asunder. I never managed to keep my own children long, which explains why they are not here with me now, making my meals, adding straw to my bedding, bringing me a cape to hold off the cold, sitting with me by the fire with the knowledge that they emerged from my loins and that our shared moments had grown like corn stalks in damp soil. Others take care of me now. And that's a fine thing. But it's not the same as having one's own flesh and blood to cradle one toward the grave. I long to hold my own children, and their children if they exist, and I miss them the way I'd miss limbs from my own body."
The Book of Negroes won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize and earned Lawrence Hill the opportunity to meet the Queen and to see the actually Book of Negroes.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2646237731
If you think this book is about how wonderful, kind Canadians treated the black Loyalists, you are doomed to disappointment. But I think it is important we accept that history and learn from it. Would you like to learn more about the history behind this book?
https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/books/behind-the-book-of-negroes
A mini-series was made from the Book of Negroes.
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