The novel that I am currently reading for my ISP is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. My overall first impression of this book was that it was hard to understand and difficult to really get into. Hill uses tricky words that are from African culture so I am not accustomed to understanding them. The main character Amanita Diallo is a smart girl, but already goes through a lot of pain at the age of 11. I am getting deeper into the book and I am fascinated to see the outcome.
Amanita Diallo's life is just at the beginning, this young girl has a lot more to experience in her life. I predict that in this hard life that she will be forced to live, the young Amanita will encounter many bad and good experiences, which she will have to face with her bravery within. Once Amanita is off this boat I imagine that she will be sold to a rich family in England to be their slave or sold to a cotton planation. Then if Amanita has a chance to escape I bet that she will take it but if not, she will have stick it out there until she has another chance of freeing herself. By the end of the book I think that Diallo will make her way back to her homeland like she always said she wanted to do.
Amanita has met several unanticipated situations already in her life and I sense many of these events are connected in someway. Starting at Amanita's parents being killed in front of her trying to protect her, to a father and a daughter dying, and from many people killed on the deck of the boat at the time of the riot. Amanita has watched her family and friends die before her own eyes. Death a common theme with these certain events and they trying to make Amanita's life hell, no one cares about her well-being and she is on her own now.
The impression this book is
giving me about Hill as a person is that he grew up with racial problems just
as Diallo.
His parents in their own racial
issues might have influenced Hill since they would have grown up strongly with
them. He seems like a person that could be sympathetic but also hard on the facts where he needs to be. With writing a novel like The Book of Negroes you need to express the information fully in order for the reader to really understand but also display it in a way that makes the readers atmosphere feel like you are really there experiencing these events for yourself.
Hill needs readers that know a little about these situations, he isn't trying to influence our views but trying to make us aware of these situations. I am not saying that he isn't trying to influence us at all but I think it is true that he wants us to feel for Amanita and her people, but that is not the only position he is coming from. Readers like older generations and myself are bringing are own values and worldviews into reading this book. I think this may complicate things because if our views are bad we are obviously prejudice against the book at the beginning and we don't come into reading it with a fresh mind. I think it is very important to read a book that has racial issues with a clear mind so that you get the best experience and knowledge while reading it.
As I reflect on myself as a reader my perspective is that when I come to the boring bits, I don't pay as much attention as I really should, I read through it but not to my best ability. This is a bad thing to do because then perhaps I will miss something that may be important later in the book and I might have needed that knowledge to further understand what Hill is trying to say.
I am finally taking an interest in The Book of Negroes after a couple 'boring' chapters and am looking forward to seeing what is going to happen in the life of Amanita Diallo.
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