Aminata
Setting
1745-1805
Bayo Africa
“It’s not about whether it will do me good. It’s that I want to go home.” (418)
Slave Ship
South Carolina
British Colony
Nova Scotia
“The pain of my losses never really went away. The limbs had been severed, and they would forever after be missing. But I kept going. Somehow, I just kept going" (351)”
Other Characters
Appleby
Evil
“Bring back my baby!’ I shouted. He laughed in my face.’Bring him back!’ ‘Too late. He’s sold. Only got me five pounds, but he’s a buck, and he’ll grow and make his new master a fine profit one day.”
Chekura
Compassionate
"that evening Chekura brought a calabash of water and some soap made from shea nuts, and offered to help clean the wound on my thigh". (Hill 38) "
Intelligent
"I have never seen someone from Africa learn so fast."
Dedicated
"It was hard work, but i showed him that I learned fast and would do the job well. I had no wish to anger him"
Symbols
Books
Knowdlege
Africa
Freedom
Boat
Entrapment
“locked inside this pen” ( 93)
Racism
"'we don't serve niggers" (313)
“You talk real fancy for a nigger,” (252)
Family
Manadua, and May (Aminata's Kids)
Aminata's parents
Literary theory
Colonialism
Slavery
Sold into slavery at age of eleven
“Too late. He’s sold. Only got me five pounds” (184)
Struggle
"I lived in terror that the captors would beat us, boil us, and eat us, but they began with humiliation: they tore the clothes off our backs" ( 29).
Freedom
"a nation that said all men were created equal, but kept my people in chain" (311)
Idenity
Name changed to Meena
Minorities less than human
“Chekura was dead. Mamadu was dead. May had been gone for five years… I missed all three of my loved ones so terribly that my body, it seemed, was half missing.” (p. 370)