The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

 So here's a bit of history I didn't know.  During the Revolutionary War, the British promised freedom to any slave who would help them defeat the colonists.  Unfortunately the British lost but before there was any kind of USA and before the Red Coats headed back to England, they tried to make good on their promise.  They collected the names of any Negro who could show that they had helped and put those identified on ships to Nova Scotia with promises of free land. This record became the real "Book of Negroes."  Pages of this book can be found in museums in Canada, England and our National Archives Public Records Office.  The promise of free land was not so real.  

This is the story of Aminata Diallo who could` have been one of the names in that book.  But her story starts much earlier.  As an 11 year old girl, in 1745, she is taken from her village and marched to the West Coast of Africa where she joined hundreds of others on a ship bound for the Americas. Her mother had trained her to deliver babies and her father had taught her to read some of the Koran but neither parent survived to make the horrible journey across the Atlantic.  For various reasons, Aminata has some freedom to move about the ship and, as she does, those who are chained together call out their names to her.  As she moves back and forth, she calls them back proving that she will remember.  It is a belief in many of the West African cultures that you die twice.  Once when your body dies and again when your name is no longer spoken. This struggle to remember is one of my favorite parts of the book.

Hill wisely starts the book with Aminata's adult story so you know she not only survives but has obtained a position of some importance.  Knowing this made the heart braking story of her life possible to read.  This is one of the best personal slave stories I have ever read.  I hope that the strong and brilliant ways she manages to make her way to freedom were just as possible as the horrible side of slavery was true.  And that we will remember.