The Book Of Negroes By Lawrence Hill And The Color Purple By Alice Walker

“Slavery.” The name comes about so many times in history. However, I did not truly comprehend the full extent of the term until I viewed the movie The Book of Negroes. What did I expect, based off of the title? I expected a historical documentary on slavery and the effects it had on military, politics, and economics. Instead a got a film about a girl who had to endure slavery from age eleven, when she was captured and her parents were killed before her own innocent eyes.

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are both prominent influential authors of the Reform Era. Both writers, who spring forth from similar backgrounds and unimaginable situations, place a spotlight on the peculiar circumstances that surrounded the lives of the African American slaves. After reading and analyzing both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; readers discover the horrifying truths that belong to the past in connection to slavery.

“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity and to assert your own” –Aminata Diallo. The Book of Negros was written by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. The Book of Negros is about a young girl named Aminata who is brought to London, England, in 1802, by abolitionists who are petitioning to end the slave trade. As she awaits an audience with King George to speak on her personal experience of being a captured slave, she recounts on paper her life story. Aminata was abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village, Bayo in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle—a string of slaves. Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Despite suffering humiliation and

In The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois, DuBois argues his point-of-view on racial tensions in the south during and after Reconstruction. DuBois was a key figure African-American historian and civil rights activist in his time leading and defending his fellows African-Americans. One of DuBois’s themes ranges on race relations developed after Reconstruction in the south. DuBois elaborates on the overwhelming divide between the white population and the black population in his chapter about race relations. DuBois lists how blacks have been crippled economically, socially, and politically by disfranchisement and the Jim Crow laws after reconstruction.

Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life of Aminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life. She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.

The Book of Negroes and A Boy Called Nam are two influential pieces of Canadian literature. Published in 2007, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes is a historic fiction while A Boy Called Nam, written in 1984 by Leo Heaps, is based on a true story. The Book of Negroes chronicles the fictional life of Aminata Diallo from the time she is kidnapped from her West African village and sent to colonial America as a slave to her eventual journey to freedom. Conversely, A Boy Called Nam is about a ten-year-old Vietnamese refugee, his survival of the shipwrecking of his refugee boat, which kills everyone else on board, and his new life in Canada. To better understand the two literary works, a reader must examine the authors’ life in addition to the text.

The Scramble for Africa can easily be defined as the forced invasion and division of African countries among European superpowers. Those powers included Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Each superpower wanted control over a certain area on the continent and would do anything to ensure that their area remained in their best interest. To bring the conflicts to the forefront, the countries participated in the Berlin Africa Conference in 1884-1885. In this conference, the issues of Anglo-German relations and everybody’s control in Africa were discussed. As a result of the conference, European control began to overtake the African continent and imperialism became a giant part of the European mark. In his book, “Worlds of Color” W.E.B DuBois discusses the idea of whole colonial enterprise stating that the problem the world faces is the color line. This can easily be interpreted as Dr. DuBois giving the idea that if World, more specifically European superpowers stop viewing the color line and Africa’s color line as something less than them a lot of the world’s issues could be detected and fixed. But more importantly, Dr. DuBois is stating that without the Worlds of Color, European industrialization would not exist.

In her essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me", Zora Neale Hurston offers the reader an inspiring and positive stance on how she views America's brutal past of racism. She describes herself not even realizing she was colored until she had turned thirteen years old (1). She was born innocent like every other child as we can see when she says "During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived here." (2). With the use of vivid metaphors and colloquial language she expresses her project as showing the reader that it is possible to overcome the highly negative psychological effects of racism. Knowing the circumstances she was born into as a black female, and knowing the circumstances she lived through to write this essay in 1928, is astonishing.

Mary Churchill Terrell, a college educated African American, daughter of former slaves, and activist. Terrell, also known for great accomplishments such as being the first African American woman of Washington DC 's board of education, the first president of the national association of colored women, and her most memorable work, the delivery of her speech at the Washington 's women club, "What it means to be colored in the capital of the US." This speech is so iconic and memorable because Terrell speaks on the oppression that blacks dealt with during the time the Jim Crow law 's from a personal perspective, and also because she is a woman who at the time was considered the bottom of the social ladder. Her mission for this speech is admirable, she presents the realities a colored experience in Washington DC otherwise known as "the colored man 's paradise" she accomplished this with a strong use of diction, and a mixture of multiple rhetorical tools to address the problems of unrecognized racism.

In The Book of Negroes the situation of the female slave, Aminata provides insight into her harrowing journey as a child experiencing slavery; a women struggling for survival, dignity, and motherhood rights; and a woman working with Abolitionists to raise awareness regarding the repugnant, oppressive conditions of slavery. In this novel, women are treated worse than a slaves and women are unmistakably treated as the inferior sex. Hill includes an ironic aspect relating to women being treated inferior to men in the words of Aminata as a young girl: “I remember wondering, within a year or two of taking my first steps, why only men sat to drink tea and converse, and why women were always busy. I reasoned that were weak and needed rest” (Hill 13). From this text, it is clear that women are treated unfairly and also they do not even get time to get rest.

“We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.” Fredrick Douglas’s account of slavery in America revealed the reality of worst case of the abuse of human rights. In 1865, slavery was abolished. In the aftermath of slavery, African Americans struggled against prejudice because of their race. However, black women in particular suffered because they faced not only discrimination based on race but also gender. African American women were subjected to two types of prejudice because they

Zora Neale Hurston is the speaker of this article, who is a colored girl growing up in a small Negro town in Florida named Eatonville. When she moved to Jacksonville, she realized what it was actually like being a colored girl in the outside world. Nevertheless, she was really proud of her ethnicity and disregarded all criticism.

However, for no justified reason she is abused arbitrarily by Albert regardless of how well of a worker she is to the household and the children. In her little discussion with Shug Avery, she explains how Albert beats her for no apparent reason. “He beat me when you not here, I say”, “What he beat you for? She ast. For being me and not you” (75-76). Fortunately, towards the end of the novel, Celie makes a decision to leave the continuous cycle of abuse and becomes an independent woman who has her own clothing company. Celie knew she was better than what Albert thought of her and because of her epiphany she discovered more inner beauty and self- confidence. All in all she received more respect and was looked more as a human being than a servant. Ironically Celie’s antithesis, Sofia, had her poor decision making progressively get her into a deeper

Celie practically struggled for happiness her whole existence. Her father sold her to a man who had no intent of loving or caring for her. Celies’ husband whom she refers to as Mr. physically and verbally abused her. Mr. felt that the only way to keep a woman in check was to beat her and he did just that throughout the movie. Like any woman would though the abuse Celie lost herself and respect for herself. Living with Mr. was a life full of darkness and hatred. Life with her husband was no better life than life with her stepfather. It took years for Celie to become brave enough to fight back for what she accept as true and gain understanding of how to convey amusement and have little outlook on life. After years of abuse, Celie no longer was afraid of Mr. She no longer cared for her husband or the

Because Celie seeks to protect her younger sister Nettie from being degraded by Pa, Pa frequently targets Celie to be the subject of his physical and sexual abuse. Pa constantly rapes Celie and eventually impregnates her twice. Pa also physically abuses Celie. In one letter, Celie references an incident where Pa punches her because she accidently winks at a boy in her church (12). On top of the physical and sexual abuse that Celie suffers from, Pa also verbally abuses her. He frequently tells Celie that she its ugly and unwanted. Eventually, Celie internalizes these words and begins to think view herself as though she is ugly and unwanted, so she believes that the things that happen to her must be normal. All of the abuse that Celie suffers from at the hands of Pa causes her to characterize all men as violent and