(That you can gather from reading the publisher’s blurb, but I’ll not spoil anything else.)
She survives the voyage to the coast, the journey across the ocean, the process of being sold and inducted into plantation life and indigo production, and much more. The author likes to imagine there is a novel for each of the 3,000 men, women and children whose names are entered in this ledger, but that his, the novel of Aminata Diallo’s life, is the first to appear as The Book of Negroes. ( HarperCollins video here)Īminata Diallo was stolen from her family and village and sold into slavery when she was eleven, young enough to continue to dream of going home.
The Book of Negroes was a British military document, which recorded the names of black loyalists who sought to leave Manhattan for Nova Scotia after they had escaped slavery by serving the British in the Revolutionary War.Īnd so, the novel is named for a “living, breathing document”, as the author describes it, with over-large pages of names and descriptions and details.
I thought the American title, Someone Knows My Name was a beautiful title, and hadn’t realized it was chosen to avoid controversy (also in Australia and New Zealand). The author’s response to this event and consideration of the “kaleidoscopic evolution of racial terminology” appears here. I’d been wanting to read this volume since it was published - and that intensified with every longlisting, shortlisting and win - but the idea of it having inspired such controversy secured my determination.
It certainly captured this reader’s attention. Book burning: it’s a headline-grab alright.
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