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The Book of Negroes

4.41 of 5 stars 4.41 · rating details · 22,539 ratings · 3,168 reviews

Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom—and of the knowledge she needs to get home. Sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence, Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan, Aminata helps pen the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks reward...more Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom—and of the knowledge she needs to get home. Sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence, Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan, Aminata helps pen the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks rewarded for service to the king with safe passage to Nova Scotia. There Aminata finds a life of hardship and stinging prejudice. When the British abolitionists come looking for "adventurers" to create a new colony in Sierra Leone, Aminata assists in moving 1,200 Nova Scotians to Africa and aiding the abolitionist cause by revealing the realities of slavery to the British public. This captivating story of one woman's remarkable experience spans six decades and three continents and brings to life a crucial chapter in world history.

Over the course of this epic novel, Aminata is transformed into a storyteller extraordinaire. She spins the astonishing tale of her remarkable travels from Africa to America and back again. Along the way, a sojourn in Nova Scotia illuminates a long-neglected chapter in Canadian history.

Aminata’s autobiography — or, in her words, “ghost story” — begins with her idyllic childhood in West Africa. Happy times are cut short when she is abducted at age 11, placed in chains, taken across the sea and forced into slavery at an indigo plantation in South Carolina.

But Aminata is a survivor and this is just one chapter in her remarkable life story. In a fitting twist for a book featured on Canada Reads, Aminata discovers that literacy just might be her ticket to a new life.

Following its release in 2007, Lawrence Hill’s compelling blend of history and fiction won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in 2008.

An Excerpt

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, Dear Reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied. Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel?
The History Behind the New Novel

Lawrence Hill's novel is inspired by a fascinating but little known historical document called the Book of Negroes, copies of which can be found in the USA at the New York Public Library, the Rockefeller Library at Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) and the U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C. In Canada, copies of the same historical document can be found in the Nova Scotia Public Archives and in the National Archives of Canada. Lawrence Hill wrote a feature article called "Freedom Bound" about the historical document The Book of Negroes in the February/March 2007 edition of The Beaver: Canada's History Magazine.(less)

Hardcover, 486 pages

Published by HarperCollins Canada (first published November 5th 2007)

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Oct 05, 2009 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: absolutely everyone

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2009, favourite

(International title: Someone Knows My Name)
It's 1802 and Aminata Diallo, now an old woman, sits down to write her life story at the request of the Abolitionists in London. Abducted from her village in West Africa at the age of eleven and marched in a coffle (a string of slaves) for three months before reaching the coast, Aminata survives the voyage to America and ends up sold to an indigo plantation owner in South Carolina. She describes herself as lucky, because compared to the tragic circumst...more

59 likes · like · see review

Aug 20, 2009 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommended, reviewed-books, historical-fiction, canadian-author

Update (2):
This just in from BOOK NEWS -
"Lawrence Hill's bestselling novel The Book of Negroes is set to be adapted for film thanks to a chance meeting in a Toronto bookstore."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/a...

Update:
"The Book of Negroes" by Lawrence Hill tops Amazon.ca books list for the week ending June 16, 2009

Larry's extensive research and plain great story-telling are only two of the reasons why it was Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; the winner of The Rogers Writers' Tru...more

22 likes · like · see review

Jan 29, 2012 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Becky by: Historical Fictionistas

Shelves: 2012, historical-fiction, holocaust-and-atrocities, nook, political, reviewed, the_south, tear-jerkers, challenge-1010

I've wanted to read this book for a long time, so when it was chosen as a group read in my Historical Fiction group, I jumped at the chance to push it to the top of my list. And I'm very glad that I did.

Aminata Diallo was pulled from her home in Africa at 11, forced to walk 3 months to the coast, crossed the Atlantic on a slave ship, and then was sold into slavery. From there, her story veers off in unexpected directions, and I found myself fascinated and completely wrapped up in her life and a...more

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Dec 04, 2009 Eastofoz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Readers who question "history"

Shelves: fiction

This was a quite a surprise read. At first I was expecting something along the lines of Alex Haley’s Roots but it doesn’t have the same quick pace and gut wrenching scenes, it did however prove to be an eye opener with a strong story overall.

Told in the first person and mostly through narration (two writing styles I normally dislike), the story comes to life from beginning to end which shows how talented a writer Lawrence Hill is. Even though it was told in the first person the reader can still...more This was a quite a surprise read. At first I was expecting something along the lines of Alex Haley’s Roots but it doesn’t have the same quick pace and gut wrenching scenes, it did however prove to be an eye opener with a strong story overall.

Told in the first person and mostly through narration (two writing styles I normally dislike), the story comes to life from beginning to end which shows how talented a writer Lawrence Hill is. Even though it was told in the first person the reader can still appreciate the other characters and feel for them in the same way they do for the main character. Being primarily narration you’d think it’d be dense and boring but it wasn’t. The story centres around a young girl, Aminata Diallo, who was kidnapped from her village in Africa and sold into slavery in the southern US. She worked in the indigo plantations and also as a midwife. Her story starts out with her peaceable existence in her village, then her frightening voyage to stay alive as she crosses the Atlantic chained in a slave ship, to her youth spent in slave labor in the US followed by her escape into Canada, a return to Africa and finally ending up in the UK. She meets some kind souls along the way as well as some of the most heinous human beings imaginable.

The author did extensive research on slaves who were loyal to the British Crown and fled to Canada in the hopes of finding freedom and a promised El Dorado. In the history books used in schools Canada is often seen as a land of hope for the escaped slaves but it couldn’t have been farther from the truth. These people managed to escape one kind of misery and squalor for something equally as vile. Not only were they lied to by the British, they were treated worse than dogs, segregated and had virtually every injustice imaginable happen to them all trying to survive the harsh climate and geography of early Canada. It was a miracle that any of them survived. That information alone made for quite the wake up call. The book though is never a story of victimization, it’s more of a triumph of the human spirit in the face of unbelievable adversity and horror. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic unfortunately and I was left wanting more.

The story is often an emotional roller coaster ride that sucks you in right from the start leaving you to believe that you’ve read this kind of thing before but as you go along you realize it’s very different. The characters are as vivid as the various settings and the story has you checking the bibliography to see how much of this is actually true only to shock you into realizing that it’s nearly all based on fact.

It's said that history is often told by the winners, this book makes you question what “history” really is.
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Sep 22, 2008 Lesliemae rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who love a strong female protagonist

Recommended to Lesliemae by: G.E. Clarke

Shelves: canadian, course-list-favourites

I think this box is not large enough to encompass what I learned from this book. I learned about the slave trade in Canada, I learned about Loyalists coming into Nova Scotia in hopes of land and freedom and finding only disillusion, disappointment, and segregation. This tale follows Aminata Diallo from Africa to South Carolina to New York City, to Birchtown, Nova Scotia to Seirra Leone to London, England. By the end of the novel I was so invested in Aminata's story that I was moved and cried thr...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Nathan James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookgrouppick, 2010, historical-fiction, immigrant-fiction

There isn't a lot to say about this book. It was an excellent summer read: well-paced, engrossing, well written. Not a one of us disliked the book. Reading it, to me, felt like story time in elementary school. You know, you'd be excited to hear the next part of the plot and while it was being read to you it utilized all of your senses. Your childhood naivete allows you to accept all characters and plot lines as truth.

The problem with a great story like that is it doesn't make for a good book gr...more There isn't a lot to say about this book. It was an excellent summer read: well-paced, engrossing, well written. Not a one of us disliked the book. Reading it, to me, felt like story time in elementary school. You know, you'd be excited to hear the next part of the plot and while it was being read to you it utilized all of your senses. Your childhood naivete allows you to accept all characters and plot lines as truth.

The problem with a great story like that is it doesn't make for a good book group discussion. No one questions the story teller about character development or relationships between the characters during story time. And especially considering this book was so well researched, it hardly left any room for debate of the characters motivations (with a few glaring exceptions).

BIG SPOILERS AHOY!

We all thought Aminata was an amiable narrator, but it was Fanta we wanted more from. What exactly caused her to kill her baby on the slave ship in that moment? Ennui? Disdain for humanity? The baby's birth into slavery? A rabid rage for her captors? cult mentality?

How did the Witherspoons justify to themselves taking Aminata's daughter away in what seemed like a very premeditated move? I appreciate the added horror brought on Aminata by not knowing where or why or how she is. I'm just really curious to hear from them they're reasons. How does a couple convince themselves that taking a child from her mother is a good idea?

What kind of terrible omen would it have been for a slave to escape the shackles of America and Canada only to be taken back to Africa and live next to the place you were shipped away? And still have to see other people being shipped off and not being able to do anything about it? And how did King Jimmy or the historical equivalent justify his deeds? True, different tribes are different tribes, but eventually he must have known the kinds of lives he was enlisting these people into. How could that not have worn on him, despite all the wealth he was generating?

This book does a fantastic job of showing the reader Aminata's and the slave's side of things. Often throughout my reading of it, I was introduced to the smaller implications slavery must have created for all involved that I had never thought about before. It was mentioned that the breezy way history was taught in this book was enjoyable; the beginnings of Liberia and Freetown, the British deals with the slaves to have them join their side of the fight, the Canadian treatment of 'freed' slaves and the repercussions thereafter.

Hmmm. I guess I found a lot to say about this book.(less)

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Mar 27, 2009 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found it absorbing; I found it readable. I wanted to like it more than I actually did. If any of Horatio Alger's characters had been born African and sold into slavery, Aminita Diallo might be its preincarnation. It's hard to say that any slave is fortunate, yet Aminita, compared to those around her, keeps drawing to an inside straight only to be dealt the right card. Hollywood should love it. Maybe plausibility is not the most important element in historical fiction. The story "feels good" fr...more

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Jun 21, 2009 Shelly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2009, own

I love male authors who can write a convincing female lead in their novels. Lawrence Hill's Aminata Diallo is a strong, lucky, fierce woman and I really enjoyed reading her life story.

The writing itself flows so easily that falling into the story and just getting lost in it was super easy. The story itself was in turns shocking, heartbreaking and uplifting.

I am glad I sat down and fell into this book, it was worth every minute.

10 likes · like · see review

Mar 25, 2009 Wilhelmina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: african-diaspora, historical-fiction, novel

What an amazing book! The protagonist is spectacular - I don't think that I have ever identified so completely with a character in slavery. The author incorporates historical events which were new to me - always a plus. The story was so compelling and so true to human behavior. No group was all good or all bad, just human. I am just dazzled by this superb work.

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Jun 16, 2012 Sue rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, british-britain, slavery, u-s, library-book, historical-fiction, read-in-2012, west-africa, 18th-century, around-the-world-in-52

Using the historical "Book of Negroes" as a component, Lawrence Hill has created a sweeping picture of the African slave trade through the life of one woman, Aminatta Diallo. We follow her from her days with her family in the village of Bayo in an unknown country of Africa, to her kidnapping, travel on a slave ship, and arrival in the new world. The details of that voyage leave very little to the imagination. There she follows the path of many others in being victimized, occasionally befriended,...more

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Mar 28, 2010 Precious Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who loves a dramatic story

Shelves: books-that-rocked-my-world

I chanced upon this novel in a rather random way. I was invited to discuss my own forthcoming book at a book club and the book club were reading The Book of Negroes for March. I'd heard of the novel but didn't have immediate plans to read it. In the end I read the entire huge tome (it's about 500 pages) in just two or three days. I actually could not stop reading it.

I learnt a lot from this book. I learned a lot about my own family history. I am half Sierra Leonean and the Sierra Leonean half o...more I chanced upon this novel in a rather random way. I was invited to discuss my own forthcoming book at a book club and the book club were reading The Book of Negroes for March. I'd heard of the novel but didn't have immediate plans to read it. In the end I read the entire huge tome (it's about 500 pages) in just two or three days. I actually could not stop reading it.

I learnt a lot from this book. I learned a lot about my own family history. I am half Sierra Leonean and the Sierra Leonean half of my family hails from Freetown. I know that they arrived in Freetown after becoming Maroons in Jamaica and then being expelled from Jamaica and sent to Nova Scotia. Apparently they were actually born in Africa, then enslaved and then they returned to Africa - via Sierra Leone - all in the space of one lifetime. So my ancestors' journey may well have had much in common with that of Aminatta Diallo, the protag in The Book of Negroes.

One of the other things I learned from The Book of Negroes is that I'm a sucker for the epic, melodramatic saga-type novel! I fell deeply in love with this book and although it has faults, I was so smitten that the faults didn't matter to me.

To thoroughly enjoy this novel you need to be able to suspend disbelief. Our heroine possesses extraordinary, almost supernatural luck and charm. Despite being enslaved, she manages to avoid ever being whipped or otherwise physically punished despite the fact that she is incredibly outspoken. Every time an evil slave-owner feels inclined to rape her or beat her or otherwise humiliate her, she always manages to escape just in the nick of time. She is raped on one occasion, by a disgusting slave-owner, but she miraculously bounces back and seems unscathed by the rape. I got the sense that the writer, Lawrence Hill, adored his protagonist so much that he just couldn't bear to let the very worst elements of slavery befall her. That said, he does 'go there' sometimes. The description of Aminatta's passage from her idyllic village in Mali to the slave ship and beyond is so visceral and disturbing that I had to keep closing the book and taking a break to pull myself together. I felt I was there and it was emotionally draining but insightful.

Never before has a work of fiction made slavery feel quite so vivid and relatable. When I closed the book I had a renewed respect for the bravery of my ancestors who had made this same journey as captives from Africa to America (and, in their case, back to Africa again). Aminatta describes the African captives who survived the Middle Passage (or strived to survive it) as heroes and I completely agree with her.

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12 likes · like · see review

Brook Blander This is a great and really helpful review. I started reading this book on vacation a few weeks ago and realized it was a bit more heavy that I thought...more
Jul 23, 2010 07:33pm

Precious Williams Hey Brook, well the novel I'm writing right now is set during slavery days so I've read a lot of fiction involving slavery lately. I think Marlon Jame...more
Jul 23, 2010 08:11pm

Wilhelmina I agree with your review 100%! I absolutely loved this book and I loved Aminatta. Lawrence Hill says that he wrote the book thinking of his own daught...more
Jul 23, 2010 08:29pm

Jan 11, 2010 Shane rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book to be the feminine parallel of "Roots," that I read many years ago, with Aminata Diallo, a Mother Courage like character, traversing the history and geography of what was the prime trading area of the slave industry in the second half of the 18th century.

Plucked from her village as an 11-year old, she endures a harrowing voyage to America, is traded, raped, robbed of her baby and husband, and arrives in New York at the time of the War of Independance. She ships out to Nova Scot...more I found this book to be the feminine parallel of "Roots," that I read many years ago, with Aminata Diallo, a Mother Courage like character, traversing the history and geography of what was the prime trading area of the slave industry in the second half of the 18th century.

Plucked from her village as an 11-year old, she endures a harrowing voyage to America, is traded, raped, robbed of her baby and husband, and arrives in New York at the time of the War of Independance. She ships out to Nova Scotia as part of the Loyalist evacuation (a place which in the book is portrayed as more inhospitable to blacks than New York) and finally "adventures" to Freetown, Sierra Leone in search of her true home.

But it was at this point that the message came home to me, one I have wrestled with as well in my novels and as an immigrant. Aminata, despite many trials upon returning to Africa, does not reach her village home in the end. She winds up in England, front lining for the Abolishionists in their attempts to ban this heinous trade. Home for Aminata (and for all of us displaced ones) is in the present, wherever she is, for the home of the past has disappeared and can never be recovered- that is a very telling message that is perhaps obscured amidst Aminata's many adventures.

The other strong message is that this is not about blacks vs. whites - both sides have some redeeming characters and some pretty nasty ones too. This story is about using might for profit and of its consequences – a message still valid today. One veteran slave trader says, "There is no profit in benevolence." And as for slavery, his comment is, "Everybody is doing it - the British, the French, the Dutch, the Americans. Even the bloody Africans have been mixed up in the trade for an eternity. If we didn't take the slaves, the other Africans would kill them, butcher them live." Given what has happened even in the last century, in places like Rwanda, I can't refute his cold-hearted logic. Hill re-affirms, that despite our colour, we are capable of good and evil in equal measure. Aminata's redemption is that through her suffering she is cleansed of whatever bad she may have been capable of doing in her life and is pointed towards securing the greater good of mankind. She truly is a soul finding her path to salvation by carrying her cross on earth.

My only peeve was that as the author was covering over half a century of history, some sections were narrated over very quickly, particularly Aminata's later years in Nova Scotia and Freetown and this period was out of balance with her life story in the "Thirteen Colonies". Then again, in today's attention span deprived world, I am not sure who would have the patience to read a Book of Negroes I, II and III either (which is what this book could have extended to, given its rich source material) .

An author who undertakes to document his racial origins is a bold individual, because implicit in that investigation is the possibility that not only the noble but the ignoble would be uncovered. And Hill has demonstrated that courage admirably and sensitively in this book.

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Oct 20, 2009 Bill rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

My expectations were set really high for this one. It sat proudly at the top of my to-read pile with an imposing 4.40 average across close to 1400 ratings.

Now, I'm not one of those dinks who look to read popular novels (see Da Vinci Code pinheads) just so they can turn their haughty noses up on them and knock down averages), but I'm afraid my rating will knock this average down just a notch. Not because I'm a pinhead, but because
The Book of Negroes lacks what I need in a novel.

Time and again, wh...more My expectations were set really high for this one. It sat proudly at the top of my to-read pile with an imposing 4.40 average across close to 1400 ratings.

Now, I'm not one of those dinks who look to read popular novels (see Da Vinci Code pinheads) just so they can turn their haughty noses up on them and knock down averages), but I'm afraid my rating will knock this average down just a notch. Not because I'm a pinhead, but because
The Book of Negroes lacks what I need in a novel.

Time and again, when I read these types of novels, I can't help but hold them up to the bars that were raised by Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, or Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Particularly A Fine Balance. That novel tore my heart apart. Mistry had developed those characters so well, that with every turmoil or setback they came up against, I hurt with them, I rooted for them,I damn near cried for them.

The slave trade is one of the truly dark stains on our history. All of those wasted lives, and families torn apart forever. How could this story of a girl sold into slavery and sent halfway around the world be anything but tragic?
While I felt for everything she had gone through, and felt for her losses, the betrayals, I didn't feel a whole lot for her.
The Book of Negroes reads like an autobiography, but this is a novel. I need novels to be rich in character development to engage me enough to care not only what is going on with them, but to care about them as if I know them.
There are rare exceptions to my rule (Brian Lumley's Necroscope series for one, and hey, if you're the type of person who will read everything from Book of Negroes to Necroscope, well, you are a kindred spirit to yours truly. Anyways...), but, by and large, strong characters are IT for me, and I found Hill to be somewhat lacking in this skill. There are some authors out there (Stephen King is one, John Irving is another)
who can paint a vivid picture of a character with the subtlest of details or quirks in the space of one paragraph, that will stick with you through the entire story. I found through this story, Aminata relays these terrible things that are happening to her, and I felt like nothing more than a bystander, albeit feeling sadness that these types of things really happened, much in the way I felt it when I learned about this in history class. I also found his prose to be just a little too simple.

Anyways, I'm rambling here and more or less repeating myself. Bottom line: I liked the story. I had hit a point with about 100 pages to go where I was anxious to move on to something else, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did.
Hill did touch me emotionally with the last few pages, so don't think that I didn't feel anything at all for Aminata. I just didn't feel it a whole lot through most of the story. There I go repeating myself again.

Okay. Good story. Thinly developed characters. Recommended for those interested in this point in history. And there were parts to the story where the plight of her people really hit me. Oh yeah, and I loved reading about what New York City was like in the late 1700s. Follow Broadway to the woods. That's rich.
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Feb 19, 2009 jo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to jo by: eccentric muse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shelves: african-american, africa, canadian, im-emigration-post-colonial, trauma

as best as i can judge, lawrence hill reproduces here the style and tone of the classic slave narratives, which he also credits at the end (in particular, he directs to reader to The Classic Slave Narratives collected by henry louis gates in one volume that includes olaudah equiano's, mary prince's, frederick douglass', and harriets jacobs' autobiographies). i have taught a couple of slave narratives (douglass and jacobs) and i must say it was a labor of love, because, well, because they sound d...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Ðɑηηɑ rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: 'INFIDEL' fans; women, those interested in slavery and/or African-American history

Shelves: historical-fiction, cultural, 4-stars, 2012, male-authors, usa, sierra-leona, hebrew, paperback, pub-2000s, female-protagonist, award-winning, my-rating-matches-avgr, slavery, historically-accurate, canadaian-author

Wow! Can't believe I found this book finally, in a market in the nice city of Tel Aviv. Hope it's as good as it looks like.

A beautiful, vivid novel. Certainly my kind of book! I enjoyed it very very much.
Narration The narrator is an admirable woman, speaking in two voices: one, when she is old. This form of her is dry, sarcastic, tough and direct. The second voice grows as she tells the story: at first, she's a girl and at last, she is the old woman. At times, I despised her, as an old narrator,...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Demetria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"Someone Knows My Name" is historical fiction about a young black woman who is stolen from Africa and finds herself as a slave in the US. Without giving too much of the book away (it is a good book and you should read it), the main character is in New York around the time of the Revolutionary War. The British promised black folks freedom if they helped the British forces against what would later be called the United States. Obviously, the British lost, but they did take a few thousand black folk...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Rowena rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Rowena by: Maxine

Shelves: afrocentric, canadian-lit

This is definitely the best book I've read in 2011 and one I will remember for a long time. Aminata Diallo is such a powerful character, a woman who had to deal with so much in her life but came out with a small victory in the end. Slavery is something we all know about but it's very rare we really think about what the slaves went through, and how they were forced to adopt to a new culture and life separated from their family and homeland.Lawrence Hill did exceptional work on this book.

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Jun 16, 2012 Ruth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In general, I prefer finely written, taut, compact literary novels to big sprawling ones. I had to get past that in order to appreciate this book. I certainly learned a lot. It was a riveting, even if sometimes not quite believable, plot. I feel that the writer really did his research. But I also felt as if he was never going to let me forget it. He was going to move his characters through an arc that would make me learn everything that he’d learned or die trying. So while it was all very intere...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Mary Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookgroup

This is an excellent book, and well worth reading.
It is the second book I've read in the last 6 months that dealt with slavery during the Revolutionary War period. The first was The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. Both novels featured Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of the Virginia colony, who promised slaves that they would be made free if they fought with and worked for the British against the rebels. The rebels, of course, were white property owners who were fighting against British ty...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Dav'ne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a teenager I thought "Gone with the Wind" was romantic. To this day my mother still does. I lost that illusion years ago and am grateful that I am no longer that naive girl. This book is narrated by a fictional African, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen from her village in Africa in the mid 18th century prior to the Revolutionary War. It is a story of thievery, loss, dishonesty, misery, pain, and heartache. Another page turner that I can't put down. Nearly finished and Meena (as she is called by...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Ella rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ik ben erg gegrepen door dit boek. Het levensverhaal van een Afrikaans meisje, gevangen door slavenhandelaars en verscheept naar Amerika. Door haar intelligentie en haar wil om te overleven leert ze lezen en schrijven, spreekt verschillende Afrikaanse talen maar leert buiten neger-Engels ook beschaafd Engels te spreken.
De schrijver heeft heel veel research gedaan naar de tijd van de slavenhandel en de uitbuiting van de negers door Amerikanen en door Engelsen.
Ook de Nederlanders hebben een grot...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Rowlak5 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, favorites

Reading Someone Knows my Name was an experience I will never forget. Inside the pages I found a strong, curious, amazing heroine empowered by the privilege of knowledge she comes upon throughout her life despite the odds against her. Unexpectedly, lovely characters kept surfacing amidst the many that were despicable. It had beautifully written chapters; making an unbearable story take shape into a wonderful saga.

The author, in spite of being a man, creates a character in Aminata that is THE gre...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Marisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: oh-canada, black-power, historical-fiction, favourites, own

My family is anti conditions-of-blacks-in-the-American-south type of literature. I was taught to avoid being "one of those black people who obsess over slavery" and focus on our future. Being born in Canada and growing up in an East African/West Indian family, there was a belief that the American slave experience was somehow "not our experience". With that said, the only reason I read this book is because the author is from Canada. Shallow, but true.

The story is told in retrospect through the e...more My family is anti conditions-of-blacks-in-the-American-south type of literature. I was taught to avoid being "one of those black people who obsess over slavery" and focus on our future. Being born in Canada and growing up in an East African/West Indian family, there was a belief that the American slave experience was somehow "not our experience". With that said, the only reason I read this book is because the author is from Canada. Shallow, but true.

The story is told in retrospect through the eyes of the main character, Aminata. Her character is complex. She is a strong woman, yet she worries about her appearance and acceptance, at times she questions herself, she feels tenderness for her loved ones, she feels fear and sadness. To her benefit (and at times to her detriment), she is assertive throughout her journey. Despite loss, violation, and overt and covert attempts to "put her in her place" she remains dignified. I loved the way all of the characters were portrayed. White doesn't necessarily mean bad/enemy. Black doesn't nessarily mean good/friend. And then there are the people in between (Jewish, Mulatto) trying to find a balance between being an insider and outsider.

The novel coveres about a 50ish year period. It explains some of the historical connections between the roles of Africa, USA, Canada, Europe, (with a touch of the West Indies) in the slave trade. But it also addresses some issues that persist to this day (defining cultural and religious identity, relations between minority groups). Because the book was so expansive, there are points in the story towards the end that seem "rushed" in terms of character/plot development. However, this works on some level because the circumstances in the plot suggest that Aminata herself may have been "rushed" towards the end of writing her story....but I could just be making excuses for the author because I like the book hehe. This is actually the first book I have read about the slave trade, but it will definitely not be my last.

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Aug 10, 2011 S rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought that The Book of Negroes was a great summer read. Lawrence Hill assumes a tone which allows one to learn about the history of slavery in a way that is personal and reflective of lived experiences. The author brings historical documents to life primarily through the character, Aminata Diallo. (Hill provides an extensive list of sources at the end of the book if you wish to learn more).

Aminata is orphaned and snatched by slave-traders when she is only a child. Throughout her life, Amina...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Shannon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-authors, bookclub

The Book of Negroes taught me some things that I didn't know about slave history and that is always a good thing. The story is character and plot driven. It is surprisingly easy to read given the potential for horrendous acts (and there is horror). Because it was such an easy read I waffled about giving it 4 stars as I was reading it but by the time I finished I realized that the story matched the narrators personality.

I loved this book because it starts in Africa. We get to know Aminata as a yo...more

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Nov 28, 2009 Lana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Through Aminata we see many different facets of the slave trade. For me the author has used Aminata to show us many of the different experiences slaves might have encountered, in that way she seems to have lived the lives of more than one person, and taught me much more than I knew about the slave trade.

Personally I have connections to Nova Scotia so it was interesting (an informative) to hear about how the slaves were treated there. It was also hard to know that those things took place in a la...more

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Dec 22, 2008 Susan G rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am sorry to report I was disappointed in this book. I was excited to read about the Black Loyalists of Nova Scotia. But there wasn't enough about that; most of the book was devoted to Aminata's kidnapping, passage, and slave days. Nothing wrong with that, but when he finally got around to the less familiar topics, he seemed to run out of gas.

What bothered me more, though, was the mediocre writing (and editing). There were just too many inconsistencies (why isn't she unfamiliar with cities and...more

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Mar 07, 2009 Gail rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Book of Negroes is a novel that should be sung, rather than read. It is a song of worship, in praise of the taste of an orange, the smell of a newborn; and it is a lament to the horrors we are capable of inflicting on each other, no matter what the colour of our skin. But above all else it is a love song urging us to celebrate our romance with our own dear humanity. "Ba means river," Lawrence Hills' powerful character Aminata writes in The Book of Negroes . "It also means mother." When I fin...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Cj rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 02, 2013 Tasha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, africa

Although a wonderful book and one I can definitely recommend, I feel like the rating hovers around 3.5 and doesn't quite make a solid 4 star read...for me. The story itself was an interesting and riveting one and I felt I learned a lot, so a wonderful read in that respect. I think I just couldn't fully connect with the voice of the narrator and the writing was lacking something that I usually feel in 4 and 5 star reads. I am glad I read it though and I can definitely recommend it to others.

Updat...more

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Book of Negroes same as Someone Knows My Name	16	193	Apr 01, 2013 05:02am
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About Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill is a journalist and novelist.

His third novel, published as The Book of Negroes in Canada and Someone Knows My Name elsewhere, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and the 2007 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

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Books by Lawrence Hill

Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada

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“To gaze into another persons face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.” — 44 people liked it

“You must learn to respect," Papa said.

But I do not respect her," I said.

Papa paused for a moment, and patted my leg. "Then you must learn to hide your disrespect.” — 20 people liked it

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