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.