The Book of Negroes is a 2007 award-winning novel from Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. In the United States, Australia and New Zealand, the novel was published under the title Someone Knows My Name. 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...