ISP Blog Post #5

Bog Post #5 – Post-Colonial Literary Criticism

I am going to apply the post-colonial literary criticism to my novel, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. There are two examples of a dominant culture oppressing another in this novel. The first one is American white men, the “toubab” forcing African people to come to America and work as slaves. The second example is America’s colonization by Britain and their fight to be free from British rule.

This novel explicitly represents colonial oppression of African’s by white American’s. African’s were stripped of all personal freedoms and rights. Aminata was forcibly removed from her home village, family and culture. She lost her right to practice her Muslim faith because she was not allowed to pray. She was not permitted to marry the man that she loved (Chekura) and her baby was treated like property by her ‘toubab owner’. Back in Africa, family was the main source of Aminata’s identity but she did not have the right to have a family as an African slave.

A couple examples in the novel of post-colonial cultural identity are the maps of Africa that Aminata found in the library and the description of different African’s by the slave trade overseer, Mr. King. The map of Africa drawn by white American’s had pictures of a monkey on it and a child lying with a lion. Aminata didn’t even know what a monkey was and said an African child would be foolish to lie down with a lion. “This ‘Mapp of Africa’ was not my homeland. It was a white man’s fantasy.” (Hill 216) Aminata also took offence to Mr. King’s description of a ‘lazy’ type of African who she knew to be a very hard-working tribe. These misrepresentations of her culture made her feel even more oppressed. This reminded her once again that her white owners really didn’t care about who she really was or where she came from.

The second example of post-colonialism in this novel is the oppression of American’s by the British. The United States at that time (1700’s) was a colony of Britain. The colonies had a lot of freedoms from Britain but they wanted more freedom. Aminata eventually moved to New York and it is here that she first hears of the American’s dislike of the British. “It’s war now and we shall have freedom.” “Freedom? For the slaves?” “Niggers, nothing. I’m talking about us. Rebels. Patriots. We shall be free of the British and their taxes. Never again shall we be slaves” (Hill, 254). This was an American speaking to Aminata about freedom. As Aminata spoke with this young man, she thought it was ludicrous that the white people who were her ‘owners’ could consider themselves ‘slaves’ of the British. The anti-colonialist resistance of the Americans eventually lead to war with the British.

The way the Americans were treated by the British doesn’t really compare to the way the African’s were treated by the Americans. Africans were stripped of their basic identity and culture, while the American’s were free to develop their own identity and culture. 

ISP Blog #4 Feminist Literary Criticism

Applying the feminist literary criticism to my novel, the Book of Negroes, is challenging because my novel is about the slave trade in America and it is difficult to separate the treatment of slaves from the way women are treated in the book.

In general, women are represented as weaker than men in this novel. They are valued more for their bodies than their minds. In this text men often view women as a sex object more than anything else. “I held my words. When Master Appleby looked at me, his eyes roamed all over my body. Mamed was staring at me, but straight into my eyes, as if he sought to evaluate and understand me”. It was strange for Aminata to have a man value her as a person more then just a body to use.

Common roles for men in this book are drivers, overseers, government workers, slave traders, and hard labourers. Women were expected to cook meals, clean, take care of children, shop in the market and make cloths.

The strong women were expected to work alongside the men. “She explained while I was working with Mamed, she and the men were hauling stumps from a patch of land. “ Snake biting, bee-stinging, bug crawling no-good dirty work,” Georgia said.’’ Georgia was a physically strong woman so she often had to do the same jobs as the male slaves.

Aminata and Georgia, the woman who cared for her when she first came to America, both ‘caught babies’ for women in labour. They exercised their power by bartering for things they wanted and needed in exchange for their services. Some women in Charles Town were allowed to “self-hire”. This means they could go out and look for work for themselves but some of their profit had to be given to their owner. The consequence of this is that some women were able to earn some money and buy things for themselves.

One big difference in this novel than it was normal for that time, is that Aminata was taught to read by two different men other than her father. It was not common for women to learn to read in that day. However because Aminata was smart and ‘sensible’, her second owner, Mr. Lindo, taught her to read plus some basic math skills.

I believe, from what I have read so far, that the women in this novel have been given more opportunities than most women in that day would have been given. For instance, Georgia bartering when she was asked to catch babies and Aminata learning to read and do math. Though when we hear about how poorly woman were treated back in the day, in this novel I would say they are being treated better then most women were not considering the slavery factor.

Slavery

One of the main issues in The Book of Negroes is the slave trade from Africa to the United States. Africans were captured in their homeland and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to many different continents and countries. Not many people really think about the issue of slavery now a days. Our generation has not really been affected by slavery. According to David Northrup, in his book, The Atlantic Slave Trade 2^nd Edition, most of the Africans slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade were enslaved between 1700 – 1850. This is a long time ago.

However, the slave industry in the US was big back in the day. But the US was only one place that Africans were shipped to. In school, we are taught about only the slavery in the United States. However, in reality the U.S. only received about 7 percent of all slaves from Africa. According to Paul E. Lovejoy, there were 11,863,000 slaves that were exported from Africa during the whole period of the Atlantic slave trade. Within the novel, Aminata, mentions in her journey across the ”river”, that only two-thirds of the captives made it all the way across alive. Northrup confirms this number when he estimates that one third of the Africans died on the trip across the ocean. When I see numbers, it helps put things into perspective. So looking at these numbers, it is a huge eye opener to the issue that the slave trade was even outside of the US.

Another statistic I found was that 65 percent of slaves were male and 23 percent were children (male and female of the age of 15 or under). In my novel the main character is an 11 year old girl when she was captured and brought to the US, so she would fall under the 23 percent that were children. 

All of these facts about the Atlantic slave trade of Africans were fascinating and new to me.

ISP Blog #2

I am going to evaluate my ISP novel, The Book of Negroes, using the Reader Response Theory. The author mentions a number of times in the novel  why she is writing the book and how she hopes people who read it will respond to it. Reader response theory looks at how I interact or am impacted by the story because of who I am and how I read it.

I think as a 16 year old boy, I may not understand all of the things that the author wants me to understand. But I think I do have a connection with the main character and her personality. Aminata is a feisty and sassy girl. She says things the way she sees them and she finds it hard to not say everything she is thinking and feeling. This is like me. I laugh whenever she does something sneaky or rebellious because that is what I would want to do if I was her. I think Aminata and I would get into a lot of trouble if we were friends.  She hates to see people hurt other people and she sticks up for the underdog. I am like this too. I really like Aminata’s spunk and determination.

A few years ago I read a book about Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was born as a slave in the US but escaped and became free. She helped rescue many other slaves through the underground railroad. I think reading the book about Tubman makes me realize what Aminata and the other homelanders are in for when they arrive in the US even before this book talks about it. I know she will be a slave and I know how slaves were treated.

Also, I have some very good friends who are from Africa. Some are from Ghana, some are from Ethiopia and one is from Kenya. It is hard to believe that black people were treated like animals. I know back then that white people didn’t think black people were real people but that is so different from now that it seems strange. I am glad we don’t think this way anymore.

I think all of these things help me experience this book differently than someone else.

ISP Blog #1

For my ISP novel I'm reading The Book of Negros. Throughout the first 1/5 of this novel there were many predictions that I was able to make, whether they were good predictions or far fetched predictions, I still was able to make predictions. Some of the time when I would make a prediction it would be based on a clue I believed the author had planted, like she was foreshadowing. For example when one of the soldiers that captured them mentioned how not a single captive has ever returned home before, she said, "Then I will sleep by day and walk at night. But listen to me, friend. I will come back. And I will come home."  When reading this, I would predict that most likely she was going to be the first to escape or break free and make it back to her home. In most fictional stories that's how the story would go, but my novel is non-fiction, so I was able to make many predictions without knowing for sure what the out come will be. Like whether she would actually return home, or she could be killed and that's what she means by going home.

My novel is about the life of a little girl who was taken from her village at a young age for slavery. You can only imagine all the graphic images she paints into your mind. The most graphic image she described for us was when she would be stepping over dead bodies that laid on the path they were walking on from past journeys. I can only image being forced to walk on this really narrow path in a forest with body after body you would need to walk over. Being bitterly cold from being naked, having bruises on my neck or wrists from the restraints, having cut up bloody feet and hunched over from being so hungry. When she talks about having a break at night or a rest before continuing to walk through the night, I just think of my most tiresome day I've ever endured and times it by two and that's how I picture how she is feeling.

The captures that captured the villagers are not always from across the ocean, they could also be from other villages. While Aminata was making the journey to the boat to take them across to ocean she met a younger boy who was working with the captives so he wouldn't be sent over seas. When Aminata first met the boy and it was mentioned, I wasn't really sure why it mattered that she talked to him once in a while until he had made some acceptations for her with the captives and took care of her. I soon realized that there was a bigger picture of why she mentioned him in her story because when she was getting into the boat to cross seas, she saw the young boy all bruised up and beaten and boarding the boat as well. This put a lot of stuff into perspective when you see a young boy who helped capture villagers and walk them night and day for months to send them over seas just to save himself, then to see him all beaten up and forced to do the same as everyone else he was leading it was very saddening. He had to do so many things he may not wanted to do to people he may have cared for and to be treated in the end just like everyone else.

My Strengths and Weaknesses as an Essay Writer

As an essay writer I tend to over think everything I write. Often it is good to over think this, but other times it may just bring me down. For example, I may have a very good thesis statement and good arguments but I would still feel like something is missing or something is wrong. I would spend so much time just focusing on either, the way I stated thing in my intro, what order I should putting my arguments in to make it sound like a stronger point or just even if my thesis statement is good enough period. Once I get going with my essay, once I make it past the intro or the first paragraph I can make it flow, I can make a very good convincing or to the point essay. I may lack in the intro but once I get going I make all my arguments, all my transition sentences, and my conclusion solid.

Essays have never been my strengths. I've never been organized when writing essays. In elementary school we learn about writing out an outline or brainstorming or even just dot notes before starting the essay, but I've never really done the whole "planning" an essay thing. I understand the importance of it but I tend to just rush into my essay without any plan/outline.

Just from reading this blog you can tell I need some organisation skills/an outline before I start writing. I tend to lose my train of thought and drift of into a whole knew topic. I'm going to work towards planning out my essays before I start writing just so my thoughts can be some what organized.

A Little Bit About Myself

Hi, my name is Jared Wiebe and I am 16 years old. I would say I'm a real active guy, I can play any sport you name with a few exceptions of those weird sports people would randomly throw at me to prove me wrong. I haven't ever really been good at academics but I have started to pick it up this past year. I mainly focus on my sports but I have been realizing that my academics will be the thing that would take me far in life. I now play sports just to keep me active and in shape, so now I only play High School sports, no competitive sports. The sport that I have gotten into in High School would be swimming. My friends and I joined the swim team last year as a joke and for something all of us could do together since I quit the band which used to be, "our thing". The funny thing is, we all were pretty good, better than average I would say. Our first year of swimming we were able to make it all the way to OFSAA as a relay and place sixth. It was an amazing experience to be on a relay with my boys and to be able to do so well. Moving on from my interests in sports, there are many other things about me that I would say are interesting or at least things about me. I have two sisters, one has a fiance, one dog and two parents. That stuff isn't really interesting but this next thing will be, my dog has had 21 puppies. They probably were the cutest things you'll have ever seen, sadly we had to sell them but I was able to name one of them, his name was Duke. You have to understand, my dog is a Shih Tzu, and if you don't know what they look like I will be attaching a picture of them, but the point is that the name Duke is normally for a big powerful dog but I chose to name a little Shih Tzu that. Basically I have told you two of my favourite things about me, my athletics and my dog and her puppies, so now you know the main things about me.

This is a video one of my best friends and I made in grade 8 for a project. Basically describes our friendship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVaEjDl9vV8