5 quotes

I walked, because I was made to do it. I walked, because it was the only thing to do. And that night I walkd, over and over again I heard my father’s final word. Aminata. Aminata. Aminata. (p34)

  This is the last sentence of the first chapter, after Aminata got kidnapped and her parent got killed while they are trying to save her. It is very important because this that is the first time she left her parent in her whole life and this is the first day of her salve life. In this sentence, she keeps hearing her father calling her, after that, her father and mother sound keep showing up in her brain throughout her whole life.

I screamed as I have never screamed before. I didn’t recognize myself. I had no clothes, no hair, no beauty, no womanhood. (p203)

  Aminata just got marry and had her first child. Her owner Appleby found out about her baby and the celebration of the marriage. He gets very mad; he rips her good clothes and shaves all her hair. Aminata loses her mind when she sees herself in the mirror. This is related to the theme dehumanization, Appleby humiliate Aminata physically and mentally because he “owns” her. I think Aminata should not have the celebration at the first place because she knew that she has such a master.

Allabu Akbar, I mumbled to myself. But maybe Fanta had been right. Maybe God was impossible here. ( p107)

  When Aminata was crossing the ocean, she watched toubabu and black people killing each other. She watched Fanta killed her own baby, who just caught by Aminata, and she watched her throwing Sanu baby into the ocean. After the rebellion of black people, Aminata almost lost her faith. I felt unbelievable and sad when I was reading this chapter. It shocked me when I found out Fanta kills her baby. I think she killed her baby because she doesn’t want the baby to spend the rest of her life as a slave, which I can understand. But I don’t think it is fair for her to kill someone else’s baby, she doesn’t have the right to do it.

We stayed with the beast until new lands met our feet, and we stumbled down the long planks just before the poison became fatal. Perhaps here in this new land, we could keep living. (p109)

This is the last sentence of the book one. In my opinion, it is saying that they got out of the ship before it kills them. And they shall keep living if the new land offers them a chance. I think Aminata is quite a positive person. She can always think of the good side, of situation and people. This personality of her keeps her from losing her mind and going crazy, after she lost so many things and people she loved and cared.

I didn’t mind the sliver-grey coloring by his temples, or the smooth baldness of his head. He was my man, just further along the road of life. I wanted to watch him grow older still. I wanted to note all of the changes, one day to the next, and I wanted to protect his hands, in mine. (p325)

This is how Aminata feels when she saw Chekura again after another 9 years. This paragraph moves me but makes me feel sad at the same time because she is going to lose him again. This is related to the theme love vs. freedom. In my opinion, love is more important to Aminata, because love is the one thing that she is living for and fighting for. She wants her freedom for love, she wants a good life with love, she want to go back to Africa and find love. Everytime she moves on, she has her faith on Chekura and their love.

Post #6: Obstacles

  A very big and important obstacle in my life so far is to study at Canada. It is a chance, an experience, but an obstacle at the same time. The hardest thing is to speak English all the time, since I don’t really use English back home. It was very hard at the beginning because I could not understand anything at all. I had to stay up late doing homework and memorizing English vocabularies. Beside language, I had to get used to the life style, the weather and the rules here. Unlike home, I need to do and face everything by myself, laundry, cleaning my room, getting sick, feeling sad…  It is impossible that all these things did not change me, it changed me more than I could ever image.  Living and studying in Canada made me a maturer than before because I need to deal with everything by myself, I knew my parents would not be there for me when there were problems. However, I learned to be independent. I met lots of great friends here, from all over the world, everyone of them teach me something I could never get a chance to learn if I was studying back home.
  Growing up is never easy. If I stay in China I wouldn't be able to become whoever I am. We only get to grow up when we experience pain, when we suffer from unfamiliar place, when we feel sad and disappointed. Therefore we get to know the world, get to understand the rules, get to see who we are and get a chance to be a better person.

  Coming to here is a obstacle, but I prefer to consider it as a chance, a chance for me to go through different experiences, a chance for me to grow up, a chance for me to find myself.

post 5 Social Experiments & Theories

  Milgram's Shock Experiment at Yale University in 1961-1962 is a study of “obedience to authority”. Members of the general public play a role of a “teacher” with the task of shocks of increasing magnitude to student( Milgram’s confederate) every time he failed to answer the right answer, and the shock was not real. To everyone’s shock, 65% teachers went all the way to 450v.

  In Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, students were assigned to be either guard or prisoners. The study had to be terminated after just 6 days because of the abuse carried out by the guards.

  Both of experiences show that when people are put in stressful conditions with intense social and authoritative pressure, they could behave in ways that go against their own ethics and morals.

  Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

  In The Book Of Negroes, there are lots of examples of dehumanization. People that take charge or have a certain level of power, no matter white or black, fit into their roles very quickly and act in a way that go against their own ethics and morals. White people have a role of “master”, they own their slaves, and so they do whatever they want to black slaves even what they do could hurt black people very badly. Some black people have certain level of power compare to others. Under stress from buckra, they go against their own ethics and morals, help buckra to take control of their own people. In the other way, when black people accept their role, which is slave, they start acting more like a slave. And when buckra abuse black people but sometimes kind to them, some black people might generate Stockholm syndrome, which make them start to understand and even help buckra. In the book, Aminata wrote, “ Most of the time there was nobody on the plantations but fifty Negroes, watched by a Negro overseer and his two Negro assistant. There was not a toubab in sight, but still nobody tried to escape the island.” In Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, lots of students actually acted like prisoners during the experience, after the experience, some of them even think that the guards are stronger and taller then prisoner when they are chosen. When Africans accept that they are slave, they start to think that they are less powerful and they do not have the ability to go against buckra.

post 3 : The Book of Negroes Title

  I think “The book of Negroes” is a appropriate name for the book. Because the book tells a history and stories of black people when they were call Negroes and treat as Negroes. The name might lack of respect and seems rude to some people, but the history was dark and inhumanity, the way the world treated black people was not fair and respectful. Roy Groenberg claimed that he would burn The Book Of Negroes because they struggle for a long time to let the word ‘nigger’ disappear from the Dutch language and now Hill set Book of Negroes. Book burning is very disrespectful, everyone has the right and freedom to write and read. Roy Groenberg’s action actually reminded people more about the word “Negros” more then the book, he is the one should learn to adjust his attitude about the history.  Base on my understanding of the book, I think the book can also be named as “The book of black history”.

post 4 "And my story wait like a restful beast"

  “And my story waits like a restful beast” is a chapter that describes Aminata’s later life in London. The title of the chapter uses the literacy device similar. She describes her story as a restful beast because when others know the story, they will be as shock as they just meet a beast. And the beast is restful because, as she describes on the chapter, abolitionists are only trying to abolish bondage of black people. But they are doing this for their own good; they are not really trying to help black people. Aminata wants the world to know their stories, know what they have been through, but they are not offering her a chance. “Englishmen do love to bury … African in irons”, abolitionists and people that started the slave trade have no different at some point, they are just doing what are good for them. At the end of the chapter, she write “Sometimes I imagine … I will have lived for a reason”, at the beginning of the book, she also wrote that she believes there is a reason that she has been lived so long. I think she means that it is her density to been through everything that she has been through, and tell to story to the world.