A review by bandkh1
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
5.0
I wish I could have given this book 6+ Stars because I really, really loved it. I was engrossed from the first page. The book provided all my requirements of a book: information, history, warmth, education and a rollicking good story into the bargain.
There are some books you don't feel qualified to review. Here am I, a middle aged, white woman who, although I have faced gender discrimination in my working life, have never remotely dealt with anything like the challenges faced by the heroine, Animata Diallo.
Yet, I felt strongly connected to her. Her love of language, her dignity, her spirit and love of family - all these things I can relate to. To me, she was a strangely modern character, well ahead of her time, strong, outspoken, reflective but not once during the book did I feel that Lawrence Hill portrayed her unrealistically. On a side note, I find that the fact that Hill penned his protagonist as female is interesting in itself - he certainly "captures" the female psyche well!
Lawrence Hill has done his homework and, in doing so, has educated and enlightened me. I had little knowledge of the African Slave trade. Sure, I knew that people were captured from different language groups, bound together and shipped to wherever they would fetch the highest price whilst facing unspeakable cruelties and indignities, but that was about it. I didn't know anything about daily life on the plantations, the Book of Negroes, the shipment of Loyalists to Nova Scotia and other destinations, the establishment of Sierra Leone. I had seen Slaves as wretched people and, undoubtedly they were but I hadn't realised the extent to which they were able to form communities, comfort and nurture each other and tenuously keep in touch with others through the underground "fishnet" system. To say that they often triumphed over adversity would be an understatement.
Yet, their losses and the humiliations inflicted on them were mind numbing. On considering what Animata lost, gained back, lost again, all the while enduring unimaginable hardship, it was difficult to see her surviving and yet she did - magnificently so. At the risk of spoiling other readers enjoyment of her story, I will only say that her survival is only one of the uplifting events in this book of sorrows.
The writing is spectacular but never inaccessible. Lawrence Hill tells this epic tale simply. Written in the first person and in a narrative style (both styles I usually steer clear of), it is never dry or dull and doesn't intimidate the reader. And his writing is poetic. How could you not cry when you read something like "Englishmen do love to bury one thing so completely in another that the two can only be separated by force: peanuts in candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons"?
The only negative I had with the book was the ending, which I felt was a little too neat and happened too quickly. I actually wrote to the author, Lawrence Hill and asked him why he ended the book so and he replied with his sound reasoning, so I was very happy to have heard from him. I still disagree with him but I suppose, as the author, I can allow him his opinion!
In summary, to those readers who long to read something of substance, READ THIS BOOK. You will learn so much about the lives of the slaves, both those stolen from their homelands and those born into slavery and you will be uplifted by the resilience of the human spirit and what it's capable of accomplishing. But you won't just learn - you will also get to read a well researched, well written, fantastically good book! And those are few and far between!
There are some books you don't feel qualified to review. Here am I, a middle aged, white woman who, although I have faced gender discrimination in my working life, have never remotely dealt with anything like the challenges faced by the heroine, Animata Diallo.
Yet, I felt strongly connected to her. Her love of language, her dignity, her spirit and love of family - all these things I can relate to. To me, she was a strangely modern character, well ahead of her time, strong, outspoken, reflective but not once during the book did I feel that Lawrence Hill portrayed her unrealistically. On a side note, I find that the fact that Hill penned his protagonist as female is interesting in itself - he certainly "captures" the female psyche well!
Lawrence Hill has done his homework and, in doing so, has educated and enlightened me. I had little knowledge of the African Slave trade. Sure, I knew that people were captured from different language groups, bound together and shipped to wherever they would fetch the highest price whilst facing unspeakable cruelties and indignities, but that was about it. I didn't know anything about daily life on the plantations, the Book of Negroes, the shipment of Loyalists to Nova Scotia and other destinations, the establishment of Sierra Leone. I had seen Slaves as wretched people and, undoubtedly they were but I hadn't realised the extent to which they were able to form communities, comfort and nurture each other and tenuously keep in touch with others through the underground "fishnet" system. To say that they often triumphed over adversity would be an understatement.
Yet, their losses and the humiliations inflicted on them were mind numbing. On considering what Animata lost, gained back, lost again, all the while enduring unimaginable hardship, it was difficult to see her surviving and yet she did - magnificently so. At the risk of spoiling other readers enjoyment of her story, I will only say that her survival is only one of the uplifting events in this book of sorrows.
The writing is spectacular but never inaccessible. Lawrence Hill tells this epic tale simply. Written in the first person and in a narrative style (both styles I usually steer clear of), it is never dry or dull and doesn't intimidate the reader. And his writing is poetic. How could you not cry when you read something like "Englishmen do love to bury one thing so completely in another that the two can only be separated by force: peanuts in candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons"?
The only negative I had with the book was the ending, which I felt was a little too neat and happened too quickly. I actually wrote to the author, Lawrence Hill and asked him why he ended the book so and he replied with his sound reasoning, so I was very happy to have heard from him. I still disagree with him but I suppose, as the author, I can allow him his opinion!
In summary, to those readers who long to read something of substance, READ THIS BOOK. You will learn so much about the lives of the slaves, both those stolen from their homelands and those born into slavery and you will be uplifted by the resilience of the human spirit and what it's capable of accomplishing. But you won't just learn - you will also get to read a well researched, well written, fantastically good book! And those are few and far between!