The Book of Negroes

The chapter begins in Bayo when Aminata is eleven years old. The village is “three moons by foot from the Grain Coast in West Africa” (4). Her father, Mamadu Diallo, is a jeweler. One day he trades a gold necklace for a teapot, and he awakens her in the night to join him for mint tea. They talk of Timbuktu, across the mighty Joliba River, a center of Islamic learning, where he once travelled. She asks again to hear the story of how her parents met. Her father and some traders stopped at a friendly Bamana village, and when he first saw Sira Kulibali, he knew he would marry her. Since he was a Fula, their marriage would have been forbidden, but tribal allegiances were shifting due to external dangers. In these “troubled times” (11), people were disappearing at the hands of kidnappers; so, “new alliances were being formed among neighbouring villages” (11).

Aminata’s father teaches her to read and write in Arabic, a rarity for a girl. She also learns to speak both her mother’s Bamanankan language, and her native Fulfulde. Her Mama is a skilled midwife who lets her daughter accompany her in her work. Aminata learns about menstruation and female circumcision, a ceremony which will be performed on her when she is of age. She has heard stories of other villages being attacked and even men “sold by their own people,” but she is not afraid. She is a “freeborn Muslim” who says her prayers and has “the proud crescent moon” carved into her cheeks (13). But even within this peaceful village, there are captives, “all unbelievers”; one of them is Fomba, a “woloso,” or second-generation captive (13).

One day, when returning from a birth, Sira, Aminata, and Fomba are attacked by strange men with the same color skin, but no tattoos like theirs. They try to fight back, but the men kill Sira during the struggle. The men bring a bound Aminata back to the village, which is in flames. All the grown men are yoked, as she, too, is. She runs to her father, who is also bound, but he is shot and killed while trying to free her. The man who kills Mamadu uses “an unusual, long, rectangular stick” from which “fire exploded” (27). As she is marched off into the night, she hears her father’s last words over and over, repeating her name.

Aminata and Fomba are marched away, and their captors use fear and humiliation to keep them in line. There are eight captives from Bayo and neighboring villages, but in the dark, Fomba is the only one she recognizes. In the morning light, she notices Fanta, the fourth wife of Bayo’s village chief, among the captives: she is five months pregnant. All the prisoners are forced to march naked. Aminata is determined to escape, but “to where could a naked person run?” she wonders (31). She is beaten every time she tries to pray, and eventually she gives up. They are marched over a river, and through villages, but no one helps them. She is befriended by a young boy of fourteen named Chekura, who has been employed by the slavers for three years. He tries to help her, but at first, she disdains him. Soon she realizes he too is a victim, orphaned and sold to a cruel uncle who later sold him to the captors. The slavers promise to free him after the job is done.

Every day, the captives increase in number as the “coffle” of yoked prisoners moves through various villages (31). Fanta, hungry and tired, taunts Aminata, but she fights back. During the long march, Aminata starts menstruating, and Chekura obtains permission for her to receive help from some village women. Some of the captives die and are left to rot. The prisoners also see decomposing bodies during their journey. The march goes on for months, and Aminata measures time not just by the moon’s cycles, but her own menstrual cycle.

After three months, she sees her first “toubab” or white person, a “new breed of man” with “speckled” skin “like that of a washed pig” (44). Chekura warns her that the toubab are dangerous. A new captive, Sanu, arrives, and is placed in the coffle. She and Aminata converse in Bamanankan. When the pregnant Sanu goes into labor, Aminata delivers the baby. Sanu tells Aminata she would make her mother proud, and names the baby in her honor. When they reach the ocean, Aminata does not believe her eyes: she has never seen so much water. She has never seen the ocean, but she smells a rotting scent, which Chekura tells her is the odor of the ship that will take her away. The captives are penned in filthy conditions, branded, and forced to sleep standing up. They are brought to a ship which is even filthier. Chekura, who had been promised freedom, is betrayed and is among the slaves loaded aboard. Aminata vows that she will return, and turns to take a last look at her homeland as they sail away.

Dropped on deck “like a sack of meal,” Aminata imagines she has been made a djeli, an honored village storyteller, whose purpose it is “to witness and to prepare to testify” of her sufferings (55). She recalls all the things her parents taught her and relates the “series of coincidences” that saved her life on the harrowing ocean voyage. Besides the toubab, there are “homelanders” working on the ship as well (58). Because she knows multiple languages, her white captors ask Aminata to translate for them as they conduct body inspections. The orange-haired toubab, Tom, is a “medicine man” (i.e., doctor), and he helps Aminata when she urinates on herself from exhaustion.

A terrible stench engulfs the ship, and it intensifies when Tom brings Aminata down below, to Middle Passage. In the hold of the ship, conditions are worse, as the smell of human waste overtakes her. Aminata speaks to the men, who each tell her their names in a desperate attempt to assert their humanity. The men are chained to one another, as “waste and blood streamed along the floorboards” (63). She meets Biton, chief of the Sana people, who befriends her. She is reunited with Chekura, who warns her to be careful because Biton wants to lead a revolt that may get her and everyone else killed.

In the meantime, Tom gives her food, teaches her English words, and renames her Mary, a name she vows never to use. When he lets her into his bunk, and caresses her, she hisses at him. He retreats, holding a cross, which Aminata does not recognize; he does not bother her anymore, and allows her to sleep. She awakens to the sounds of Tom raping a female captive, and afterwards, she drifts to sleep again. Alone, she discovers hard, round shiny objects, which she bites into, since she has never seen coins. She is allowed to bunk with Tom, and is put in charge of caring for his parrot. He also lets her move freely about the ship. He and the other white men regularly rape the female slaves.

Captives die every day and are tossed overboard, which torments Aminata, who believes the dead must be properly buried. Chekura continues to warn Aminata away from Biton, who endures the lash and rises to unofficial chief of the captives. In singsong, with the white sailors watching, the captives dance and speak to one another, planning their revolt. Fomba, despite a severe depression, has figured out how to unlock shackles and close them again, thus fooling the captors. Alone in Tom’s cabin, Aminata conducts imaginary conversations with her parents.

After assisting Fanta in the childbirth, Tom forces Aminata to announce the birth in Middle Passage. Instead of the expected dancing and celebrations, this event is the signal for the slaves to revolt: shots ring out and chaos ensues. During the fighting, Fanta murders her baby, then grabs Sanu’s newborn, baby Aminata, and throws her overboard; Sanu, in a frenzy, commits suicide by following the child over the rail. Others follow her example, but many others fight, most to the death.

Eventually, the whites win by the sheer force of their “firesticks,” e.g., rifles (91). The dead and dying—on all sides—are all thrown overboard. Aminata, now bound, is housed with the other women. There are daily beatings that serve as a warning. Only two-thirds of captives have survived. With land on the horizon, the prisoners are made to clean themselves. Chekura apologizes to Aminata, but she no longer even remembers that he had once worked for the slave traders. Book One ends with Chekura and Aminata grateful to have escaped burial at sea and grateful to still be alive.