This paper examines how memory is entailed in the constitution and representation of global modernity by looking at various articles. The author’s main argument focuses on memory and not origins. Recurring claims are challenged in the book “Memories of the Slave Trade” where the author portrays that Africans felt no sense of moral obligation concerning the sale of the slaves by tracing down memories of the slave trade in the Temne-speaking communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is infrequently recollected in explicit verbal accounts, it is frequently made vividly present in such structures as rogue spirits, and the symbolism of divination procedures. Taking into consideration extensive fieldwork and archival exploration the author further contends that memories of the slave trade have molded experiences of colonialism and post colonialism, and additionally the country's ten-year rebel war. Consequently money and commodities, for example, are frequently interfaced to an invisible city of witches whose prosperity was built on the theft of human lives. These ritual and visionary memories have made until now imperceptible substances which form a prism through which past and present are shown mutually configuring each other. This non-fiction ethnography provides an examination of how the memories of bondage still reverberate inside the personalities and society of those living in territories to a great extent influenced by the slave exchange of 17-1800s.Consequently the idea of culture memory is addressed. Rosalind Shaw has created a well-documented and careful exploration of divination by the Temne and Mende people of Sierra Leone, Africa. New standards for the study of memory are set. It has been depicted that indi... ... middle of paper ... ... Modernity, and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 856-876 2) John Thornton “Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 273-29 3) “White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression, and Religious Faith as Causes of Suicide Among New Slaves” William D. Piersen The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 147-159, Published by: Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. 4) Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone, By Rosalind Shaw, University of Chicago Press, 08-Apr-2002. 5) http://jadedreprobate.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/a-discussion-about-morality-and-culture- in-economics/
Marilyn Frye, a feminist philosopher, discusses the idea of oppression and how it conforms people into gender roles. She claims that it is based upon membership in a group which leads to shaping, pressing, and molding individuals, both women and men.
On September 9, 1739, as many as one hundred African and African American slaves were living within twenty miles of Charleston, South Carolina. This rebellious group of slaves joined forces to strike down white plantation and business owners in an attempt to march in numbers towards St. Augustine, Florida where the Spanish could hopefully grant their freedom. During the violent march toward Florida, the Stono Rebellion took the lives of more than sixty whites and thirty slaves. Ranking as South Carolina’s largest slave revolt in colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer, a historian at the University of Georgia and author of Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739 tries to reinterpret the Stono Rebellion and challenges the reader to visualize what really went on to be a bloody uprising story in American History.
The poem, “My Great-Grandfather’s Slaves” by Wendell Berry, illustrates the guilt felt for the sins of a man’s ancestors. The poem details the horror for the speaker’s ancestors involvement in slavery and transitions from sympathy for the slaves to feeling enslaved by his guilt. Berry uses anaphora, motif, and irony, to express the speaker’s guilt and provide a powerful atmosphere to the poem.
Fires of Jubilee is a book that is talking about slavery and rebellion against it. The book is enjoyable but still is very saddening because of the occurrences in the plots. Slavery is not something to be happy about. Humans treating other humans with no mercy, and making them works with no pay for extended hours.
The experiences that Richard Frethorne endured were in a lot of ways similar to those of James Revel. Both suffered from sickness and disease, lack of resources such as clothes and shelter, and most unfortunately limited access to food. The big distinction between these two, however, is that Frethorne was shipped to the New World on his own accord in hopes of a free and better life. While Revel was forcibly shipped as a felon, sent in punishment to serve his sentence in slavery.
“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity and to assert your own” –Aminata Diallo. The Book of Negros was written by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. The Book of Negros is about a young girl named Aminata who is brought to London, England, in 1802, by abolitionists who are petitioning to end the slave trade. As she awaits an audience with King George to speak on her personal experience of being a captured slave, she recounts on paper her life story. Aminata was abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village, Bayo in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle—a string of slaves. Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Despite suffering humiliation and languishing in starvation, fortunately years later, she forges her way to freedom; by following the Slave Triangle: living in Africa to working on a plantation in the southern states and serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes”, which eventually leads her to manor houses of London. “This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own” (Haper Collins Canada, 2007). The Slave Triangle had a huge impact on everyone all over the world, and it was significant for Aminata Diallo to follow the slave triangle in The Book of Negros because it teaches the reader about the cruelty of slavery, the process or different stages of the slave triangle and the exploitation of people and goods.
There were other examples of slave rebellions that are discussed in the book, Slave Rebellions. In the book, authors Robin Doak and Philip Schwarz highlight some of the biggest slave rebellions that occurred within the Caribbean and Latin America. One of the most well known revolts was on the slave ship known as Amistad. The ship had left Havana, Cuba and heading to “Puerto Principe, a part of Cuba about 300 miles (480 km) away. The ship’s cargo included 53 Africans that two men in Cuba claimed as slaves—49 adult males and four children”. One African on the ship named Sengbe Pieh is from Sierra Leone, Africa. Before he had been captured, he was a prince of a village and had a wife. When he is captured, Pieh was given a new name and sent to
In Mary Rowlandson, “A Captivity Narrative”, Rowlandson recounts her experiences as a captive of the Wampanoag tribe. The tribe took captives from Lancaster in 1676 because of the ongoing violent altercations between the English colonists and Native Americans during King Philip’s War. Since many of the Native Americans brethren had fallen in battle, they saw it fit to take English folk captive and use them to take the place of their fallen brethren, trading/ransom pieces, or killing them in revenge. This was becoming a common practice for the Native Americans to attack villages and in result, some English started fleeing the area or started to retaliate. Rowlandson was a Puritan wife and mother, in her
In her story Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents what life was like living as a female slave during the 19th century. Born into slavery, she exhibits, to people living in the North who thought slaves were treated fairly and well, how living as a slave, especially as a female slave during that time, was a heinous and horrible experience. Perhaps even harder than it was if one had been a male slave, as female slaves had to deal with issues, such as unwanted sexual attention, sexual victimization and for some the suffering of being separated from their children. Harriet Jacobs shows that despite all of the hardship that she struggled with, having a cause to fight for, that is trying to get your children a better life
Harriet Jacobs’ feminist approach to her autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl brought to life the bondage placed on women, in particular enslaved black women, during the nineteenth-century America. In an effort to raise awareness about the conditions of enslaved women and to promote the cause of abolition, Jacobs decided to have her personal story of sexual exploitation and escape published. The author’s slave narrative focuses on the experiences of women, the treatment of sexual exploitation, its importance on family life and maternal principles, and its appeal to white, female readers. Likewise, through the use of the Feminist/Gender Theory, issues relating to gender and sexuality can be applied to the author’s slave narrative. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and its lack of reception during its own time disclose the strict boundaries and unique challenges Harriet Jacobs encountered and overcame as a woman in antebellum America.
The topic of slavery in the United States has always been controversial, as many people living in the South were supportive of it and many people living in the North were against it. Even though it was abolished by the Civil War before the start of the 20th century, there are still different views on the subject today. Written in 1853, the book Twelve Years a Slave is a first person account of what it was like for Solomon Northup to be taken captive from his free life in the North and sold to a plantation as a slave in the South, and his struggle to regain his freedom. Through writing about themes of namelessness, inhumanity, suffering, distrust, defiance, and the desire for freedom, Northup was able to expose the experiences and realities of slavery.
What do you think of; when you hear the word slave? According to Merriam-Webster a slave is someone who “is completely subservient to a dominating influence”. Two of the most known African Americans, who were born slaves and helped others of their race become free, were Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Using different tactics they helped many people become free from slavery. This paper will demonstrate Fredrick Douglass’s narrative ‘An American Slave’, which will expose his crucial role in the abolition of slavery, how Douglass overcame slavery, and took control of his own life. Douglass’s tactics for helping slaves will then be compared to Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous Underground Railroad conductors.
himself. She takes a look at it, but doesn't buy it, as it is too
Booker T. Washington was a young black male born into the shackles of Southern slavery. With the Union victory in the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Washington’s family and blacks in the United States found hope in a new opportunity, freedom. Washington saw this freedom as an opportunity to pursue a practical education. Through perseverance and good fortunes, Washington was able to attain that education at Hampton National Institute. At Hampton, his experiences and beliefs in industrial education contributed to his successful foundation at the Tuskegee Institute. The institute went on to become the beacon of light for African American education in the South. Booker T. Washington was an influential voice in the African American community following the Civil War. In his autobiography, Up from Slavery, Washington outlines his personal accounts of his life, achievements, and struggles. In the autobiography, Washington fails to address the struggle of blacks during Reconstruction to escape the southern stigma of African Americans only being useful for labor. However, Washington argues that blacks should attain an industrial education that enables them to find employment through meeting the economic needs of the South, obtaining moral character and intelligence, and embracing practical labor. His arguments are supported through his personal accounts as a student at Hampton Institute and as an administrator at the Tuskegee Institute. Washington’s autobiography is a great source of insight into the black education debate following Reconstruction.
"Africa Before Transatlantic Slavery: The Abolition of Slavery Project." Africa Before Transatlantic Slavery: The Abolition of Slavery Project. E2BN, 2009. Web. 08 Apr. 2014. .