Aminata Diallo was born free in Africa, was kidnapped at age 11, marched 3 moons to an awaiting slave ship and spent the next 60 years yearning to return home.

She made it.

This novel chronicles the life of this young lady as she witnesses first, the joys of life in her beautiful homeland and ultimately the horrors of being a slave in America.  Kidnapped, she endured, first hand, the revulsion of the Middle Passage; witnessing death, disease, murder, rape, envy, jealousy – unbeknownst to her, the framework of her new destination.  But she also witness the caring, togetherness, determination and desire to be free mentality of her companions.  Knowledgeable of a few languages, she became an asset on the ship to both the captors and the soon to be indentured servants.

She reaches the mainland and learns the ways of this new place but she still holds on to the truth of freedom and desire to return home.  As a first generation (straight off the ship), she’s an oddity to the already broken slaves that have been born into servitude.  As the customs, language and kinship to her motherland erode with time, she ‘accepts’ her fate but not entirely and when given a chance, she escapes during the Revolutionary War and becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of the Blacks that served the British and earned their freedom to Nova Scotia.

Poignant in a sense that her mind never waivered from ‘home,’ she longed for Africa and again as first generation these Africans were not yet broken therefore their desires to escape were heightened but they knew they crossed ‘the big river’ and returning home was impossible.

Lawrence shares that plight beautifully and although 60 years later she was able to return home, it was not the same and neither was she.

Excellent read

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *