Aminata's Self-Re-Discovery In The Book Of Negroes

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In the 1800’s many people of colour did not enjoy the rights and freedoms that people enjoy today. In this time, Slavery was active which many people of colours lose their freedom. More than 11,863,000 Africans have been shipped across the Atlantic, most slaves died in the Middle Passage due to horrible conditions on the ship transporting them. As a result, between with a death in 9.6 and 10.8 million Africans arrived in the Americas alive. With the odds against Aminata Diallo, she faces many losses, but through these losses Aminata manages to re-defines herself. In "The Book of Negroes" the novel focuses on Aminata's self-discovery through her loses. This includes her losing her innocence, her safety, and relationships with people.
Aminata …show more content…

As a result, she changes her mindset of safety. The term home can mean several things for individuals, for example, belonging and safety. Nevertheless Aminata lost her idea of home and safety at the age of 11:“They knew how to bring ships to my land. They knew how to take me from it. But they had no idea at all what my land looked like or who lived there or how we lived” (Hill, 213). Since Aminata was taken from her home at the age of eleven, which she lost her feeling of home, thus making her unsure of the idea of safety. Since Amanita loses her sense of safety, she does anything for freedom in the slave trade, including sacrifice her safety: “I don’t govern my life according to the danger” (Hill, 427). Aminata put her own life in danger by trying to escape slavery in the United States by seeking through the Underground Railroad. This Underground Railroad ran through the United States to Nova Scotia, where freedom can be granted. This became a dangerous escape for slaves in the 1800`s. Often, if slaves were caught, they are severely punished thus jeopardizing her safety for freedom. At the end of the novel, Aminata acquires freedom by moving to Africa: “None of us are truly free, until we go back to our land” (Hill, 257). When Amanita understands that the slave trade is still taking Africans, Aminata becomes aware that no one is safe here: “I wondered how …show more content…

Aminata’s has experienced several losses, relationships in her life which include close family members. The first loss Amanita had to cope with is the loss of both her mother and father before being abducted into the slave trade. "Each and every time, (my thoughts) were starved, flattened, and sucked out of my mind, and replaced with visions of my mother motionless in the woods and my father, lips quivering while his chest erupted" (Hill, 28). As the experience of seeing both of your parents being murdered simultaneously at eleven years old and to this day that event will forever haunt Aminata’s life. When Aminata met her husband they were most of the time separated. Nevertheless, when Chekura died Aminata started to lose faith in love: "Chekura: “My husband. After such a long journey. Gone, on the very vessel I should have taken" (Hill 382). Aminata thought that Cherkura had survived and because of Cherkura’s death, this made Aminata lose faith in love after disconnecting and reuniting with her husband several times. Losing a child can be difficult in anyone’s life, but in Aminata’s life she lost two children. "My children were like phantom limbs, lost but still attached to me, gone but still painful" (Hill 358). Aminata losing her children still troubles her. Amanitas first child was a baby girl which her slave master stole and lost to another slave owner. Her second child was a baby boy who died of

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