Status Updates From The Book of Negroes: The aw...

“It’s not about whether it will do me good. It’s that I want to go home.”
“You’ll be sold back into slavery,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because men are wicked.”

He repeated my name over and over, and then added, “I must hear you say it. Please. Say it. Say my name.”
“Chekura,” I said.
“Someone knows my name. Seeing you makes me want to live.”

One man asked, “Who is the sister who visits us?”
“Aminata. I am from Bayo, near Segu on the Joliba.”
In the darkness, men repeated my name and called out their own as I passed. They wanted me to know them. Who they were. Their names. That they were alive, and would go on living.