Lawrence Hill (1)

As a lover of historical fiction, this is one of my all time best reads. The character of Aminata is so believable as she develops from a scared naive child ruthlessly captured in Africa to the wise literate woman who understands to "beware of the clever man who makes wrong look right."
Although the wrongs of slavery and the slave trade are vividly portrayed, this book also makes one aware of how complicated life actually is. Aminata's journey back to Sierra Leone and her experiences there show more present a view of the slave trade rarely portrayed. Several others have summarized the book so I won't repeat.

This book is well-written without gratuitous violence or sex even though it was an extremely violent time and sex was such a tool of power. The characters (even the minor ones) are believable and easily come alive throughout the story. The story has obviously been well researched and I appreciated the notes and acknowledgements at the end as well as the chapter titles which always enticed me to read one more chapter even if I had something else that needed to be done.

This is a wonderful, beautiful book and I highly recommend it. show less

It's always fun to read a book set in your home town. Even though some of the places are called something else (like Polonia Park, which I am pretty sure is the Flood Bowl) there is enough description in the book for Winnipeggers to figure out what he means. Hill worked as a reporter in Winnipeg for the Winnipeg Free Press and that is obviously the genesis of this, his first novel.

Named after a great man, Mahatma Grafton was expected by his father to do some great thing. But in 1983 after show more getting a B.A. in History and French at Laval University and an M.A. in Economics at the University of Toronto Mahatma had no idea what that great thing would be. He returns home to Winnipeg to take a job as a reporter on the Winnipeg Herald (which Hill situates in the location where the Winnipeg Tribune building was located, not where the Winnipeg Free Press building was). Things don't go well for Mahatma at first. The city editor is a bigot and wants to change articles so they maximize sensationalism. Although Mahatma can write well he isn't given much scope to do so covering the criminal courts. He finally gets his teeth into the question of French Language rights which was erupting at that time. A diverse supporting cast of characters add a lot of colour to this novel. I particularly liked Hassane Moustafa Ali, called Yoyo by everyone, who was a Cameroonian journalist in Winnipeg on a fellowship. Yoyo writes about a white man on welfare for his Cameroon newspaper and makes him famous even though the Winnipeg papers consistently refuse to report on his story.

This book reminded me of a lot of Manitoba history about the French language crisis that I had forgotten. It is hard for us to believe, in this time when everyone wants their kids to learn French, that there was a time when people came to blows over the idea of the French language being used anywhere. One of the stories Mahatma covers is a brawl during a hockey game between an English team and a French team which results in a player's death. I don't think this was an actual event (at least I have no memory of it and I couldn't pull up anything on the internet about it) there certainly have been brawls in small town hockey arenas over race, religion and language. Substitute the French language with Muslim believers and you could have a book set today. George Santayana famously said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." show less

Aminata Diallo is only eleven years old when she sees her parents killed as she is being kidnapped by African slave traders. In first person narrative, an elderly Aminata (known as Meena) looks back on five decades of her life while writing her life story.

After her capture, Meena is forced to march across the continent with other captured Africans where she is put on a slave ship to South Carolina. The treatment these people endured was barbarous and many people died on the journey. It's a show more particularly painful section of the book to read. After a number of years her journey will take her to New York and eventually to Nova Scotia, Canada where she becomes a free woman. Throughout her life her one abiding goal is to return to the village she loved in Africa. Even though tragedy and cruelty are common in her life, Meena's strength of character and ability to make the best of a bad life make this a mesmerizing story.

Although this book is a work of fiction, the amount of research done is exceptional. The author acknowledges that he used real people as the basis for many of the characters in the story. Much of the story is based on historical events including the original title, The Book of Negroes. The Book of Negroes was a ledger in which the names of African-Americans who, because of their service to the British Loyalists during the American Revolution, were given passage to Canada on British ships. This novel deals with several aspects of African-American history that I was unfamiliar with, including the Loyalist slaves and the establishment of Freetown, Sierra Leone. The book also focuses on the horrors of slavery that took place while captives were still in Africa.

This was an amazing story and I cannot recommend it highly enough. show less

Aminata Diallo was a young girl of about twelve when her African village was attacked and she was sold into slavery. Aminata narrates her life story while living out her final days as a free woman among the abolitionists in London. Her journey to London took her through the indigo plantations of South Carolina, Revolutionary War era New York, a Loyalist settlement in Nova Scotia, and Freetown in Sierra Leone. Aminata somehow survived ordeals that killed many of her homelanders. With survival show more came the grief and loneliness of separations from everyone she loved.

This powerful novel pulls readers into the horrific experiences and emotions of the millions of Africans caught in the net of the slave trade. However, I was always aware that I had a choice. When Aminata's story got too intense, I could put the book down and pick it up later. I could just stop reading without finishing the book. Aminata and the hundreds of thousands of African slaves she represents didn't get that choice. show less