The Morning After

"The Slave Trade" by Auguste Francois Biard, 1840

Wow, last night I did a late night push to finish Lawrence Hill’s “The Book of Negroes.”

What a stunningly rich epic.  People have to read this book, kids should read it in school.  Its similar to a Holocaust story, in that it is a bizarre and inhumane struggle, that was real.  But why it is as important than the Holocaust for Canadians is that part of the story takes place in Canada!  (and Lawrence Hill is a Canadian too).

The story begins in the 1750s in a small village somewhere in Africa (I think Nigeria) where the main character Aminata is an 11-year-old girl.  Raiders come and kidnap her into slavery, and then about about 400 plus pages of misery later, The End.

Maybe not the best selling job to say 400 pages of “misery.”  There are also many triumphs and in the end an uplifting closure.  The main character in the novel is fiction, but she lives close to the real life events that happened to her during her voyages and captivity.

I stayed up past 3AM last night reading, then after I finished the book I had to read the Wikipedia article on the Atlantic Slave Trade (which is so tame compared to the accounts in the novel) and I read about the nation of Sierra Leone.

While Coral was reading the book, I also read about the Slave Rebellion in Haiti too.  if you’ve read the book, or are going to read it, all these articles will help with your understanding.

Where the book leaves off, the real life struggle to end slavery begins.  The British did outlaw slavery and put their money (and men’s lives) where their mouth is.  The had a squadron of the British Navy station at Freetown (where Aminata lives for a spell) fighting the slave traders and the local African tribes that continued to sell their people to traders.  They had a mortality rate that was close to 5 times higher than regular mariners serving in the Royal Navy of the time.

The Americans would fight one heck of a war in the 1860s to once and for all end the practice of slavery… and the rifts of slavery would continue to reverberate throughout history with the civil rights movements of 1960 and all the struggles in Africa that continue to this day.

I wonder what Sierra Leone is like now?  I read about Freetown on wiki and it said the city is a tropical metropolis on the ocean surrounded by beaches and jungle and it seemed fairly stable (now, they had a recent civil war).  I wonder if it would be a good place to visit?  I wonder if Bance island is still there? If people care to preserve it?

Go with yourself.