Post #7

5 Quotes

"It excited me to imagine that fifty years later, someone might find an ancestor in the Book Of Negroes and say, "That was my grandmother."" (Hill 331)

I think that this quote describes Aminata's character a lot as two of the things she has wanted most appeared on this quote. It fits very well into the theme of identification as Aminata is always afraid of dying without having anyone knowing who she is mourning for her loss just like all the other slaves that had died. This quote is very significant especially considering the time that Aminata is at when this quote was mentioned where she had nobody, everyone who she has once known had died or killed, and now the least that she could hope is that someone recognizing her name from the Book Of Negroes. It also relates to the symbol of the Book Of Negroes being the book that she was working on in that chapter.

"Each night, I climbed into bed with my daughter and tried to calm myself by following the rise and fall of her breathing." (Hill 383)

This quote displays the traumatic experiences that the protagonist in the story has gone through and it is significant to the novel because this novel is about a 'Negro's life, who once was a slave and had gone through some very horrifying and traumatic experiences in her life.

"Sometimes a deal with the devil is better than no deal at all."

The quote means a lot to this novel seeing that Aminata is constantly living in the most extreme conditions with people around that can't be trusted at all. It signifies to the readers that there really isn't much choice at those times, almost no one could be trusted and when Aminata was in some really desperate situations she would have to be forced to make a deal with the people

Post #6

Aminata faced lots of obstacles throughout the novel "The Book of Negroes" as she was kidnapped at a very young age without any idea of the western slavery world. The obstacles that I think that she had to face were the toughest were that getting over the pain from the loss of her loved ones. She has lost everyone she knew multiple times. First were her parents, who were both killed while the white men invaded her village. Then later in the novel her child was stolen, majority of Charles Town including everyone living in the house of Mr. Lindo were dead except for Solomon himself, she found out Chekura's ship was lost... She had to work hard in terrible inhumane conditions to survive. Aminata's faced so many obstacles that it can't be counted.

For me, my obstacle in my life was getting used to doing homework after getting accepted to Ridley. I didn't do any homework ever since I got into the boarding program at my school in Hong Kong in Grade 6. So I got into Ridley and I didn't do any assignments. All the teachers hated me and I was failing all 8 courses. How I Resolve it was I spent some of parents' money to hire a tutor so that he could help me catch up to my work. so money was my resource. The skill I used was obviously, knowing how to speak, read, and write a foreign language, which was english. so I actually can relate myself to the book of negroes becuas aminata's skill of knowing how to speak a foreign language actually made her life easier just as it saved me from getting butchered by my parents.  I was being enslaved by school assignments. It changed me a lot as I went from not doing any homework to finishing all of it as I have learned my lesson. And teachers didn't hate me anymore.

Post #5

The Zimbardo Prison Experiment
The experiment is assigning roles for a group of experiment subjects, one role as prisoners and the other as guards. Then the subjects will be placed inside a prison, where they will be whatever the roles they were assigned with. The experiment lets us see how the guards start to abuse their powers and authorities over the prisoners and things get out of control, as one of the guards started spraying a prisoner with a fire hose. This experiment connects to The Book of Negroes in a way when the Toubabu abused their powers and took complete control over the Africans, physically and mentally abusing them so much just like the prison guards to the point where the Africans couldn't take it anymore and rioted on the ship.
The Milgram experiment
The experiment starts with 3 people: one being the experimenter, one being an actor, one being the subject. The actor will pretend to be a subject as well and the subject and him will both be assigned the roles of teacher but the actor will however, act that he has received the role to be a student. The subject would now be the teacher and has to obey the experimenter, he has to teach the learner (the actor) a set of words and when the leaner didn't get it correct the subject will have to shock him, the shock is fake though. This experiment is to test how far people would be willing to go to obey the authority, being the experimenter and the results shown that

most of the subjects are willing to shock their patients to death (a full shock) to obey the authority. This relates a bit to the Book of Negroes because the Africans were willing to work in the plantations as hard as they could even if it meant death for them to obey the authority just because they didn't have a choice.
Stockholm Syndrome
A psychological disorder that makes the person in captivity have a positive feeling towards the captors. This connects to the Book of Negroes where Aminata defends Mr. Lindo by saying that 'killing him won't bring our child back' when she was asked by Chekura whether he should kill Lindo or not. 

Post #4

Post #3

I feel that the title "Book of Negroes" is just to get public attention whether it is to enrage everyone in the country that led to front page burnings and censorship because I think that the author knows that the title will eventually be accepted and people will start massively purchasing these books because of its publicity or former history. Or maybe the author wanted to put the title as 'The Book of Negroes' so that it feels more like the times when black people were actually called 'negroes'. The title is obviously not appropriate at all especially since it was released at a time when the word 'Negro' was so sensitive to people's ears, it might lead them to think that this book is racist or offensive. I think that the book burnings are just people overreacting to this situation, even when the details of the book is appropriate, and if they hate the book so much why would they spend money to buy it meaning supporting it then burning it afterwards? Isn't it a waste of money? Based on what I read from the novel so far, I think that the title could be changed to simply something like "Aminatta Diallo's Diary" or "Aminatta Diallo's Life of Slavery and Freedom"

Post #2

I like the essay "In The Trenches" the best because I feel it is the only essay that doesn't bore me as much and the things that the narrator experiences are phenomenal. The essay is straight-forward and easy to understand in general unlike the other two for example the 'suitcase lady' the author describes the lady's outfit and her actions and everything but it doesn't seem as convincing or leading us straight to the point, and it could mean so many things. 'in the trenches' is just straight up just war, bombardments, fear, explosions, friends... I believe that essays like "in the trenches' catch most readers' attention.

Post #1

HI. My name is Eric Fong. I'm from Hong Kong, 17 years old. Here is my first blog post.

I study in Canada in a private school called Ridley College, it is my fourth year there, it is also my last year and next year hopefully I get to go into a good university somewhere in Canada (either British Columbia or Ontario) or maybe the UK. I swim. My favorite literature is the Magic Tree House series I read when I was younger, they are always fun to read and never boring. I hope I can achieve the goal of writing better essays and speaking more fluently in English by the end of this year.