1st Blog Post - The Book of Negros

While reading the first fifth of "The Book of Negros" by Lawrence Hill I can already tell how much I am going to enjoying reading it because of how interesting the story is. The main character is a very strong and bold girl named Aminata Diallo, she was taken from her village in Africa at 11 years old and brought into slavery and named "Meena Dee". In the beginning of the story we learn all about her childhood and her parents, she thought very highly of her parents and wants nothing more than to have them back. Her mother helped deliver babies, which I believe helped aspire Aminata's want of children and grandchildren to increase as she aged. Towards the beginning of her life story the "theme" is life, towards the end t become about death and "I should not have lived this long".

The story is told in Aminata's point of view but in a child's perspective giving the story an innocent affect as apposed to an adult's point of view who might be more reflective and experience based. Giving the story more of an child's innocence feel it hits the readers right in the heart of their emotions and they instantly feel connected to the character. I think that the audience the author had in in mind was young adults and older because of the history portion of the story and the level of understanding of racism needed to be able to comprehend why or how certain events occurred.

Aminata in a way can be stubborn, she knows exactly who she is and does not change her beliefs under any circumstance. She sees her abduction as a time which she has to overcome to return to her happy life. During her new life as a slave she meets a woman named Mamed who teaches her to read and write after learning that she is Muslim just like her mother. Aminata's actions reflect on how she was raise greatly and also on what kind of people her parents were, Aminata would do anything to have her parents and her life back the way it was before so she a lot of the things she does now or when she was a slave mirror her childhood or her mother.

Aminata meets someone during her time as a slave named Fanta, they are not exactly the best of friends or friends at all really which impacts the story in a positive way because Fanta is an adult as Aminata is only 11 years old. It gives the reader more of an idea of the similarities and differences of how the abduction and slavery affects each age group of people.

I am looking forward to reading more of this book I am enjoying it so far mostly because it is so interesting how different things were many years ago.