Someone Knows My Name; by Lawrence Hill;It was originally published in Canada under the title The Book of Negroes;
Slavery in any form is a very dark and shameful mark through all the centuries on the people of all races who were involved in buying, selling and owning other human beings.
The magnitude of these crimes will never be forgotten or extenuated.
From Page 234
The people of Great Britain and other seafearing nations have devised unspeakable punishment
for the children of Ham, but in that moment and in that time, none seemed worse than their own self-inflicted torture: to sit unmoving but forbidden to sleep, in a cavernous room with arching stone and forbidden windows while a small man adopted a monotone for the better part of a
villainous hour.
From Page 452
In the endless grey of London, I missed the colours and tastes of my homeland. I found bread and meat uninteresting and unpalatable and I wondered how it was that people who sailed the oceans and ruled the world cared nothing for food and how to prepare it.
Londoners ate hardly any fruit at all. I missed the bananas, limes oranges and pineapples of Sierra Leone. I especially missed the malaguetta peppers....
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, her words about this novel;
A novel that should be sung rather than read. It is a song of worship, in praise of the taste of an orange, the smell of a newborn; and it is a lament to the horrors we are capable of inflicting on each other, no matter what colour of our skin.
3 comments:
Titania, my small library looks like yours! Mine, white shelves. I place ornaments in a few shelves like you did :-D
Thanks for introducing the book.
Btw, the vine on the banner with nice red hibiscus looking flowers - what vine is that? It's super gorgeous!!
Stephanie thank you for your visit.
The vine with the red flowers is Ipomea Horsefalliea also called cardinal creeper it belongs to the family Convolvulaceae. In a warm climate it is easy to grow. It has a very long flowering period, from late spring into late autumn, then I prune it.
Your library is much neater than mine, I sometimes wish for nice, neat rows gathering no dust, but have books lying over books, objects that do not belong in a bookcase and there's even a telephone extension cord sitting on the shelves!
I haven't heard of this book, it sounds a deep and sad book.
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