The Book of Negroes

The deaths of Wilson and Peters bring despair to the colony. At a private memorial, “speaker after speaker condemned the Company for siding with the slave-traders” (402). Some call for an armed rebellion against the few dozen Company men in Freetown. When the Company men come to pay respects, Aminata meets Alexander Falconbridge, a navel surgeon who had worked aboard slave ships. He then turned against slavery, and publically denounced the slave trade. He is haunted by his experiences and has written an anti-slavery tract, which he gives Aminata. He offers to help her go back to Bayo, but it involves going through Bance Island because travelling inland is too dangerous. She considers his offer, as she has made little progress convincing the Temne to help her. Aminata also befriends Alexander’s wife, Anna Maria, who gives her a book written by a former slave, Olaudah Equiano. Anna Maria encourages her new friend to write her life own story. One day, while having tea together, they debate the history of slavery. Anna Maria tells Aminata how the English justify the slave trade: they insist the Africans were enslaving each other before Europeans joined the trade. Aminata rejects this argument but she enjoys their frank discussions.

Aminata tries for another year to persuade the Temne to take her to Bayo. Making no progress, she accepts Alexander’s offer. She dons European garb for the trip, and “the clothing helped [her] feel as far removed as possible from the skinny, naked girl who had been penned and branded in the Bance Island slave pen some forty years earlier” (412). Once there, they are greeted by William Armstrong, second-in-command of all the English forts. The “white castle”—i.e., the fort—is as magnificent: luxuriously furnished and staffed by African servants (413). Aminata is distraught when she accidentally sees captives in their pens. Armstrong apologizes—he had not intended for his guest to see these horrors. A debate ensues about the evils of the slave trade. Armstrong asks whether the “experience was so terrible,” and he claims they do not brand the captives (421). To make her point, Aminata shows him her branded skin, and he is dumbstruck: the letters are “G” and “O,” he says, and stand for Grant and Oswald, the founders of the company that runs Bance Island (422). Armstrong warns her that the trip to Bayo will be dangerous, but she is resolute. He takes her to meet the “great Fula trader” (424), Alassane, who sells captives in exchange for goods. Aminata asks him to take her to Bayo. She speaks to him in Temne, for she does not trust him and she does not want him to know she speaks Fulfulde. He will consider her offer, he says. Back in Freetown, Clarkson tells he is returning to England. He asks Aminata to come too: the abolitionist cause needs her. She is touched, but explains that she must return to Bayo. Clarkson is terrified and tries to dissuade her, but she convinces her friend that she must go home. And if she does make it, she “expect[s] to stay” (428).

In September 1800, Aminata prepares for her inland journey to Bayo. It has been six years since her visit to Bance Island with Alexander Falconbridge. In that time, Freetown has seen an armed rebellion put down by Jamaican Maroons brought from Halifax by the British. But the colony still thrives and is attracting an increasing number of Africans, including escaped captives. Freetown’s Governor lends her a small boat, and she is accompanied by Anna Maria and Alexander Falconbridge, as well as Daddy Moses, Debra, and Caroline, the baby she delivered. Anna Maria begs her friend not to go. Aminata bids her friends farewell, believing she will never see them again. Alassane arrives with ten canoes and a load of captives he trades to Armstrong. “I return home,” she says to him, and he replies “alhamdidilay” (God willing) (432).

The journey is exhausting, but the men treat her respectfully. She is protected and well fed. She catches a fever but cures herself with the herbs she brought along. One night, she overhears Alassane and his men speaking in Fulfulde: they are plotting to sell her to slavers as soon as possible. Aminata knows in that moment that she will “never make it back home” (439). She begins planning her escape, studying the route they take and the villages they pass. The next day, despite feeling ill again, she slips away in the night. She walks for three days, hiding during the day and walking only in darkness. She disguises her tracks, as the men are expert trackers. On the afternoon of the third day, she sees a goatherd and collapses at his feet, begging for help. He speaks Fulfulde. He carries her to the village where she is allowed to rest and recover in a tent. A tiny girl peeks in at her, and they learn they share the same name. When the little girl leaves, the elder Aminata decides she will dedicate the remainder of her life to stopping the slave trade. She realizes that freedom is worth fighting for: “Bayo I could live without. But for freedom, I would die” (443).

The villagers care for her, but they have many questions. They ask her to prove she has lived with whites, so she reads to them from a slave narrative. They ask about her husband and children, and about her family in Bayo. With Youssouf, the village elder, she discusses her desire to leave Africa, despite the fact that he and his people had saved her life. He asks her to stay and be his wife. She must convince him to help her, or she will be unable to leave. She says she will stay “for one revolution of the moon” (446) to tell stories of her life. The visitors from surrounding villages bring gifts and she tells her stories. Although she never makes it home to Bayo, for one month of her life, she becomes the village storyteller, the djeli, just as she had always wanted. After she recovers from the fever, she helps the women plant the millet fields, and makes indigo with them. She asks about hiring a guide, and makes a startling discovery: “It was almost impossible to get into Africa, but easy to be taken out” (447).

The year is 1802, and Aminata is travelling to England aboard the Sierra Leone Packet. In the past, she never imagined coming to England to stay, only as a stepping stone to get to Africa. Now, she is “tired and old,” and she knows she is “crossing the ocean one last time” (448). In the port of Gravesend, she is met by John Clarkson, whom she has not seem in eight years, and his brother, Thomas. All around her are poor white people, whom she had forgotten about. The whites in Freetown had all been Company men or their wives, and they lived in luxury. Here, there is death and decay everywhere.

The brothers take her directly to the offices of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, where twelve men eagerly await her arrival. Sir Stanley Hastings introduces himself and declares his plans to write Aminata’s life story. But she is tired and still ill, so Clarkson insists on taking her to his house to recover. She longs for family, and “despite [a] life of losses,” the “loneliness” of London is unlike any she has ever experienced (452). The English climate and the food are unappealing to her. She especially misses the fruits and vegetables of Sierra Leone and writes to Debra to send her spices. She wants to meet other black people, so she corrals Dante, the Clarkson’s black butler; but he tells her he is under strict orders to keep her away from black people. As always, Aminata wonders if May lives among them, but she knows her daughter could be anywhere on earth.

At the next Committee meeting, she rebukes the committee members for isolating her from other blacks. She declares her intention to write her own story, cutting off Hastings when he suggests they will guide her. They strike a bargain: she will write her own story, but they will deal with the press. She promises not to speak publically until they can present her story to the British Parliament. She writes “on and on…with no end in sight,” as the abolitionists squirm with impatience (457). The slavers had already made their argument to Parliament in favor of continuing the trade, claiming they are “rescu[ing] Africans from barbarity in their homelands” (457). The abolitionists urge Aminata to hurry, but Hastings defends her, urging their patience. She gives William Wilberforce, the only Committee member who is also in Parliament, fifty pages of her manuscript, and he begins preparing his report.

The day comes for Aminata to testify before Parliament. Ten committee members, Wilberforce among them, are facing her as she sits alone at a long table. The two-hour testimony is exhausting. Afterwards, she must show the brand on her body to members of the press. She thinks longingly of the days when she told her stories to the villagers in Sierra Leone. That joyful affair was punctuated by “laughter and interjections, and she had felt “as if [she] were surrounded by family” (460-461). The next day, the newspapers are full of her story. In the days that follow, she receives requests to speak in public, and she accepts as many speaking engagements as she is able. Clarkson says she has “eclipsed every member of the abolition committee,” except perhaps Wilberforce himself (461). As if to confirm his words, a letter arrives: it is an invitation from King George III to come to tea.

For weeks, people line up outside the committee offices, waiting to meet Aminata. In the crowd, she glimpses a “beautiful young African woman,” about eighteen years old, with “dignity and an upright bearing” (462). As always, Aminata has never ceased to scan the crowd, “hoping for the impossible” (462): to find her daughter. But today there is no time to wonder, as she is whisked away to Buckingham Palace, accompanied by Wilberforce. A white servant brings her tea. There is no sugar present, in deference to the cause of abolition. When Queen Charlotte Sophia takes her hand, she speaks Aminata’s African name. She is the “first white person to use it on first greeting” (464).

That evening, while recovering from her public duties, Aminata receives a visitor. It is the young woman who was waiting in line to meet her that morning. She has “cheeks smooth like ebony,” and though she has no telltale decorative scars, “she looked like someone from my village of Bayo” (465). It is May. They fall into an embrace and do not leave each other’s side for two days. Aminata learns that May has always been searching for her. The Witherspoons had told May she was abandoned, but May always remembered her mother. She was stubborn and when she would not stop screaming for her mother, they would lock her in her room at night. They made her their servant but did not pay her. One day, May ran away, and a black preacher took her in and raised her with his children. May worked hard and saved money for an education, eventually becoming a teacher of black children.

Aminata visits the school where May teaches. Reporters follow her every move. She is asked to speak at schools, both black and white, as well as libraries and churches. She goes everywhere, telling her story to anyone who will listen. When her fever returns, May nurses her mother back to health. They move into nice lodgings paid for by the abolitionists. Clarkson visits in 1805 to bring Aminata a new map of Africa and to report that the cause of abolition is advancing. She asks him to take care of her daughter when she is gone, as she knows she does not have much time left. He promises to help “put [May] on a solid footing in life” and Aminata is satisfied (468).

May’s school receives so many donations that they are able to admit more children, including poor white children. May renames the school “Aminata Academy” and her mother is known as the “grand djeli” of the school; she is thankful that every student knows that the word means “storyteller” (469). Every Friday morning, Aminata visits to relate stories of her life. She shows the children a map, points to Bayo, then to London, and proceeds to fill in the missing spaces in between.

Aminata is slowing down now. She no longer leaves the house and she is napping more. She is starting to lose “track of the days” (470). She learns that May is getting married to a kind man who is also a publisher. He will help tell her story. May has also found a cartographer who will include a map with the memoirs. As May leaves to witness Wilberforce’s motion in Parliament to end the slave trade, she kisses her mother on the forehead. Wilberforce is expected “to win this time” (470). The novel ends with Aminata’s words of farewell: “They can wake me with the news, when they come home” (470).