 Cover of the Canadian edition of The Book of Negroes | |
| Author | Lawrence Hill |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | January 18, 2007 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 511 |
| ISBN | 978-0-00-225507-3 |
| OCLC | 70507153 |
The Book of Negroes is a 2007 novel from Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. In the United States, Australia and New Zealand, the novel was published under the title Someone Knows My Name.
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The author has written about the title:
"I used The Book of Negroes as the title for my novel, in Canada, because it derives from a historical document of the same name kept by British naval officers at the tail end of the American Revolutionary War. It documents the 3,000 blacks who had served the King in the war and were fleeing Manhattan for Canada in 1783. Unless you were in The Book of Negroes, you couldn't escape to Canada. My character, an African woman named Aminata Diallo whose story is based on this history, has to get into the book before she gets out. In my country, few people have complained to me about the title, and nobody continues to do so after I explain its historical origins. I think it's partly because the word 'Negro' resonates differently in Canada. If you use it in Toronto or Montreal, you are probably just indicating publicly that you are out of touch with how people speak these days. But if you use it in Brooklyn or Boston, you are speaking in a deeply offensive manner if you were to use such words. When I began touring with the novel in some of the major US cities, literary African-Americans kept approaching me and telling me it was a good thing indeed that the title had changed, because they would never have touched the book with its Canadian title." [1]
Aminata Diallo, the daughter of a jeweller and a midwife, is kidnapped at the age of 11 from her village Bayo, Niger [2] in West Africa and forced to walk for three months to the sea in a coffle, a line of prisoners chained together, with hundreds of strangers and a handful of people from her village. Even before she is placed on the ship, she vows that one day, she will return. A boy her age, Chekura, has been forced to assist the slave traders, but is later sent abroad just like the rest. He becomes Aminata's unlikely friend. After several horrific months [3] of voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, including a slave revolt, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Her name is anglicized to Meena Dee. She is taken under the wing of a fellow slave named Georgia, who helps her learn English. Seeing her intelligence and potential, a fellow Muslim slave named Mamed secretly teaches her to read and write.
As a teenager Aminata manages to reunite with Chekura, and they sneak off to meet once a month. The plantation owner, Appleby, learns of the meetings and punishes Aminata by brutally raping her. Despite her owner's jealousy, the two slaves marry and conceive a baby boy, whom she named Mamadu. Appleby arranges for Aminata and her child to be sold to separately and so her son Mamadu is stolen from her. Aminata is handed over to a Jewish man named Solomon Lindo who moves her to Charles Town, unaware of where her child may be.
Aminata grows close to Lindo and his wife, who allow her to read and write openly. However Solomon also requires her to pay him a part of any money that she earns through midwifery. After a few years, a smallpox outbreak kills Lindo's wife and son. Shortly after, Aminata is once again reunited with Chekura, who has found out that Lindo helped arrange the selling of their son Mamadu who he has been told died. This ruins the relationship Aminata has had with Lindo. Attempting to win her over, Lindo takes Aminata to New York. During the rioting at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Aminata is able to escape from Lindo. During this time Aminata works as a midwife and teacher, helping other black people to learn how to read. Proving that she served the British during the war, her name is entered in the "Book of Negroes", a real document created to list the freed African American slaves who requested permission to leave the newly created United States of America. Because of her ability to read and write as well as her fluency in two African languages, Aminata is also hired to help record names in the book. While doing this work she is reunited for a few months with Chekura, who also served the British; they plan to resettle in Nova Scotia together and she becomes pregnant with their second child. However, just as they are boarding the ship, the two are separated and Aminata is arrested, as Appleby has put out a warrant for her as a run-away slave. The matter is resolved when Lindo appears in court, explaining the situation and simultaneously setting Aminata free. Aminata, once again trying to find her husband, finds another ship to Nova Scotia.
Aminata arrives in Shelburne and begins to work in the black community of Birchtown, where she meets Jason, a young fellow whom she listed in the "Book of Negroes", and Daddy Moses (the "Preacher"). Soon after arriving, she gives birth to a second child, her daughter May. Aminata finds work for white people in town, but after a few years relations between the black community and white community break down. The white couple leave Nova Scotia and take May while Aminita is in Birchtown. She tries to locate her husband many times and learns that the ship carrying him to Nova Scotia had swept away to Bermuda and sank, and her husband Chekura is presumed dead. A young British naval officer named Captain John Clarkson comes to the black Birchtown communities, promising a better land reserved for them in Sierra Leone. Aminata helps Clarkson to gather people from the community, and eventually they all leave for a better future.
On her way to Africa, Aminata observes ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America. In Sierra Leone, the black communities attempt to establish Freetown despite the strict rules of the British. History is repeating itself - despite Clarkson's efforts, Freetown is not the safe haven it was meant to be. It is located just a few miles from a slave trading centre, the very same one from which Aminata was sent for America. Clarkson offers to take her to London, where a group of abolitionists need a spokesperson against slavery. However, longing to return to her village in the interior of Africa, Aminata negotiates with a slave trader to take her there. It takes many years before he agrees. It is a difficult journey, especially since Aminata is no longer young. She is slowing the group down, and overhears the traders talking about how they will sell her back into slavery to get rid of her. After escaping to a nearby village and telling them her story, Aminata finally realizes what is more important than returning to her home village of Bayo is helping to free other enslaved people. She takes Clarkson up on his offer. As an old woman, she finds herself taking a voyage one more time to England to present the account of her life, so it may help abolish the slave trade. She publishes her life story, speaks at schools and churches, and even meets the King and Queen. She is eventually reunited with her daughter May, and May cares for Aminata until her dying day.
The Book of Negroes won the 2007 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It was the winning selection for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2009, in which journalist Avi Lewis championed the novel. Its French translation, titled Aminata, was championed by Thomas Hellman in the 2013 edition of Le Combat des livres , and won that competition as well, becoming the only title to date to have won both the English and French editions of the competition.
In 2007, Canadian production company Conquering Lion Pictures announced it had acquired the film rights to the novel. In mid-2013 it was announced that the novel would be adapted into a miniseries of the same name, rather than the feature film originally planned. [4]
Clement Virgo and Hill collaborated on writing the miniseries, with Virgo also directing. It premiered on CBC Television in Canada in January 2015 and aired on BET in the United States in February 2015. [4] [5]
The mini-series stars Aunjanue Ellis as Aminata, Lyriq Bent as Chekura, Cuba Gooding Jr, Louis Gossett Jr., Ben Chaplin, Allan Hawco, and Jane Alexander. [6]
The international co-production began shooting in February 2014 in Cape Town, South Africa. Filming also took place in various locations around Nova Scotia. [7]
Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for his 2007 novel The Book of Negroes, inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the American Revolutionary War, and his 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. The Book of Negroes was adapted for a TV mini-series produced in 2015. He was selected in 2013 for the Massey Lectures: he drew from his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life, published that year. His ten books include other non-fiction and fictional works, and some have been translated into other languages and published in numerous other countries.
Black Loyalists were people of African descent who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. In particular, the term refers to men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom.
Thomas Peters, born Thomas Potters, was a veteran of the Black Pioneers, fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. A Black Loyalist, he was resettled in Nova Scotia, where he became a politician and one of the "Founding Fathers" of the nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Peters was among a group of influential Black Canadians who pressed the Crown to fulfill its commitment for land grants in Nova Scotia. Later they recruited African-American settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonisation of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century.
Black Nova Scotians are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2016 Census of Canada, 21,915 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. Before the immigration reforms of 1967, Black Nova Scotians formed 37% of the total Black Canadian population.
Lyriq Bent is a Jamaican-Canadian actor. He is known for his roles in the Saw films, the television series Rookie Blue, and The Book of Negroes. Bent portrays Jamie Overstreet in the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, based on the film of the same name.
John Marrant was one of the first African-American preachers and missionaries in North America. Born free in New York City, he moved as a child with his family to Charleston, South Carolina. His father died when he was young, and he and his mother also lived in Florida and Georgia. After escaping to the Cherokee, with whom he lived for two years, he allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War and resettled afterward in London. There he became involved with the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion and ordained as a preacher.
Boston King was a former American slave and Black Loyalist, who gained freedom from the British and settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. He later immigrated to Sierra Leone, where he helped found Freetown and became the first Methodist missionary to African indigenous people.
Harry Washington was a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War, and enslaved by Virginia planter George Washington, later the first President of the United States. When the war was lost the British then evacuated him to Nova Scotia. In 1792 he joined nearly 1,200 freedmen for resettlement in Sierra Leone, where they set up a colony of free people of color.
The Book of Negroes is a document created by Brigadier General Samuel Birch, under the direction of Sir Guy Carleton, that records names and descriptions of 3,000 Black Loyalists, enslaved Africans who escaped to the British lines during the American Revolution and were evacuated to points in Nova Scotia as free people of colour.
The Davis family was one of the last of the Nova Scotian settler families and though the family has descendants in the United States and Europe, the Davis family was one of the original African American families of Sierra Leone, thus part of the Sierra-Leone Creole population.
Moses "Daddy" Wilkinson or "Old Moses" was known as a Black Loyalist who gained freedom from slavery in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War, was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher in New York and Nova Scotia, and migrated in 1791 to Sierra Leone. There he established the first Methodist church in Settler Town and survived a rebellion in 1800.
Cato Perkins was an African-American slave from Charleston, South Carolina who became a missionary to Sierra Leone.
Birchtown is a community and National Historic Site in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located near Shelburne in the Municipal District of Shelburne County. Founded in 1783, the village was the largest settlement of Black Loyalists and the largest free settlement of ethnic Africans in North America in the eighteenth century. The two other significant Black Loyalist communities established in Nova Scotia were Brindley town and Tracadie. Birchtown was named after British Brigadier General Samuel Birch, an official who helped lead the evacuation of Black Loyalists from New York.
The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers were African-Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African-Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African-American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.
Lawrence Hartshorne was a Canadian merchant and political figure based in Nova Scotia. He represented Halifax County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1793 to 1799. He was a Quaker who was the chief assistant of abolitionist John Clarkson in helping Black Nova Scotian settlers emigrate to Sierra Leone in 1792 He is recorded in the Book of Negroes for having freed four slaves.
Stephen Blucke or Stephen Bluck was a Black Loyalist, in the American Revolutionary War, and one the commanding officers, of the British Loyalist provincial unit, the Black Company of Pioneers. He was one of 3,000 people who left New York for Nova Scotia on British ships. He settled in a town designed for African-Americans, Birchtown, Nova Scotia. He was a leader in the town, called a magistrate and commissioned as lieutenant colonel of the Black Militia of the greater Shelburne district by Governor Governor John Parr. He worked with a surveyor to identify the area that would become Birchtown and was involved in coordinating labour for roads and other public works. He lived the life of a middle-class person while his neighbors lived a life of poverty. He had a substantial well-built house, while most people lived in simple housing. He was a go-between for employment of some of the townspeople in labor or similar jobs.
The Book of Negroes is a 2015 television miniseries based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. The book was inspired by the British freeing and evacuation of former slaves, known as Black Loyalists, who had left rebel masters during the American Revolutionary War. The British transported some 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement, documenting their names in what was called the Book of Negroes.
The Shelburne riots were attacks in July 1784 by landless Loyalist veterans of the American War of Independence against Black Loyalists and government officials in the town of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and the nearby village of Birchtown. They have been characterized as the first race riots in Canada, and one of the earliest recorded race riots in North America.
Deborah Squash was a slave on George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation before she escaped in 1781. She went to New Amsterdam, which was the headquarters for the British during the American Revolution. At the end of the war, she was one of the 3,000 blacks in the Book of Negroes that sailed on a British ship for Nova Scotia.
Jane Jackson Thompson was an enslaved person who lived with her common-law husband, Talbot Thompson, until he was able to purchase her freedom in 1769. Talbot was a successful sail-maker and provided a comfortable life for Jane and their family.
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