Incredible, but sad story of the victims of the slave trade in the 18th century told by one woman kidnapped from her African home when she was 11. Well-written, this book is not only an interesting historical novel, but also presents the true horrors and injustice of the slave trade and slavery from the point of view of the slaves themselves.

I usually love a book that can make me feel alot of emotion. Even if one of the dominate emotions is sadness. But mixed in with the sadness is the hope of a very strong and intelligent woman. This is a great, well-written story and I highly recommend to anyone who likes historical fiction.

I'm still having a hard time believing Aminata is a fictional character! Her story took her from Africa to a South Carolina indigo plantation, to New York City, to Canada, back to Africa, and finally to London. Most authors who create such a likeable character protect them from too much pain, but Lawrence Hill is relentless with tragedy and gives Aminata no choice but to reinvent herself time and time again. A remarkable story!

This book will stick with me for a long, long time. It's a slave narrative at its core, following the epic tale of Aminata Diallo from the time she's kidnapped by slave traders from her home in Bayo, Africa to the time she's an old lady. And it's fictional... I looked! I had to! It felt so real that I was sure it had to be a real person. But nope.

It's much much more than other slave narratives I've read... This novel taught me so much about the slave trade I didn't know. I didn't know about the indigo trade in the Carolinas, didn't know the details of how the Americans AND the British used American slaves like pawns in the Revolutionary War, cashing in not only on their labor but using their very desire to be free as a way of forcing them into more servitude. I had no inkling of the US to Canada migration orchestrated by the desperate British as they pulled out of the war. And I had no idea how Sierra Leone was created by the British "for" the freed slaves. And I had no idea how complicated and limp-wristed the abolitionist movement really was. This book makes me want to do more research to educate myself.

In addition to the history lesson, the book underscores the power of language. Aminata loses her name at the same time she loses her freedom. The white slave owners call all their slave women "Mary" and later even well-meaning whites and other African-Americans call her "Mina" because of their inability pronounce her real name (ahMEEnahtah). She fights to get her name back. She also is instrumental in remembering the names of her fellow slaves and later she helps record ship manifests ("The Book of Negroes"- also the original title of this book) for freed slaves. Throughout the novel her drive and ability to learn languages saves her. Her interest in finding the right words and in using the most precise language to assert herself and ultimately in her quest to save her people.

It's a book everyone should read!

Heads up for fellow teachers- use excerpts if you can. Rape scenes, violence, and a few explicit romantic scenes would get you in trouble in your classrooms!

This was a long and tough read. Some parts were powerful and the storytelling made you feel disgusted to witness how people were treated. Other parts dragged on too long.

In all my years of reading, I cannot recall a single book that has made me cry. While I did not weep, I shed several tears for Aminata. Her journey is a harrowing account of a young girl ripped from the expansive plains of Africa, and sold into slavery to the colonies. For most of her life, every inch of her is the property of someone else: her hair, her strength, and even her baby. In their tragic, wasteful deaths, Aminata uses her parents' spirits, the lessons they taught her, to survive. She becomes a well-read midwife, and her literacy and multi-lingual existence collides the world of the slaves and the slavers. As she moves through her journey and through the world, Aminata becomes more and more aware of the British and American society's misunderstanding of slavery. Like any mass cruelty, entire countries have perpetuated misinformation and a lack of awareness in order to live at peace with the inhumane circumstances in which businesses are operated. While Aminata's tale is fictional, it is impossible to read her story without recognizing that each of these elements have been the real circumstances of thousands upon thousands of people, now long gone, in our collective history. Whether they were snatched from their homes and made to walk for months, wooden clasps around their necks, or they were shipmates on a long voyage from the African continent to the Americas, this was the horrific way of the world for many, many years. An awareness to the miseducation of those who observed and benefited from the slave trade, despite its distance from our current day situation and laws, is of the utmost importance.

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.

Wow! A near-perfect pandemic read that fell into my hands when I had both time on my hands and an acute awareness of the racial unrest that has come to a head in the U.S. in this past year. Don't know how I missed this when it came out in 2007 but I'm glad I I found it now! This is vividly written historical fiction about the 18th C. slave trade, seen through the eyes of a compelling female character named Aminata Diallo, kidnapped from her west African village and transported on a slave ship to 'Charles Town' in South Carolina. The author is the mixed-race son of Canadian civil rights activists who has certainly done his research. The tale features little known (to U.S. citizens) events such as the efforts of the British to evacuate "loyalist blacks" to Canada after the American revolution, and the settling of Freetown, Sierra Leone by Nova Scotian Blacks some 10 years later. A most compelling novel that is hard to put down! (And now I discover that that a TV mini-series was made in 2015 called "The Book of Negroes" -- which was the title of the book in its Canadian release. Time to look THAT up too!)