I would agree completely with the view expressed below that literature can act as a wonderful bridge between English, History, Geography, Social Studies and other school subjects. I would go so far as to say that literary texts should not and cannot every fully be separated from the historical and cultural moment in which they were created, and that they speak to, if they are not the same thing.
During my practicum I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach a class on The Book of Negroes, which I had just finished reading and absolutely loved. The class that was studying this text was Humanities 10, which fully integrates English and History 10 into one course, for which students get one grade and have one double block of class. I was excited at the prospect of teaching such a class, and this novel, as with Obasan, is ideal for such a lesson. Every part of this novel is steeped in the geographical, social and cultural history of the Atlantic slave trade, and woven into the beautiful and moving narrative are the stories of people who actually lived this reality.
For my lesson, I chose to focus on the theme of language in the novel, and deal with it first from a historical perspective, and then link these facts to the novel through close analysis and guided discussion. I introduced to the class the history of contact languages, showed them a short video that had people speaking the slave language, Gullah, that they had read about in the text, and then had them speak the language themselves. We then had a discussion about the role language would have played for people living in such situations as the slaves in the novel do, and this turned into a discussion of language in our own lives. To my delight, the students began on their own to make connections between this discussion and The Book of Negroes, connections I was planning on guiding them towards soon after. I asked them in groups to come up with brief statements that they felt summarized the role of language in the life of the novel’s protagonist, and to find evidence from the text to support their statement. In a follow-up lesson, we used these statements to do some work with thesis development.
Seeing how these students naturally made connections between the historical facts and the novel reinforced for me the belief that we as teachers need to promote and foster these cross-curricular connections whenever possible, and should work towards making it an integral element of our teaching practice. As Howard M. Miller said, “By providing historic, social and cultural information, we can lay the groundwork for helping our students move beyond understanding the most obvious aspects of the story to find deeper meanings embedded within it.”
3 thoughts on “The Book of Negroes”
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I completely agree with Josie that The Book of Negroes – and really, any book – cannot be divorced from its historical and cultural context. I think that Humanities is a wonderful course, as it openly welcomes the cross-disciplinary connections between English, History, and Geography. The Book of Negroes begs a historical reading; however, I don’t think that the connections can stop there. Indeed, it welcomes conversations about social justice, feminism, social geography, political science, and even psychology, and needs to be situated in these other disciplines to be appreciated in full.
First off, I want to talk about the gender issues in the novel, and provide a few examples for how it could appeal to a feminist reading. Aminata, though she is a slave, is often outspoken and stubborn in front of men. She is often constrained by her circumstances; however, she is also very vocal about her desires and her opinions. In consideration of her circumstances, I think that she has a strong sense of agency, and I sometimes found it hard to believe that she would be as bold as she was – especially considering the attitudes towards black women at the time. At the indigo plantation, Appleby decides to punish Aminata by burning her clothes and shaving her head. When Appleby tells her to throw her clothes in the fire, she stands stalk still and refuses. It is Georgia who ends up throwing them in the fire, but Aminata never surrenders to Appleby’s orders and says that “[she] had that one victory, and [she] would remember it” (178). Next, Appleby asks her to lean over a barrel so that he can shave her head more easily. She tells him “No” and refuses to move once more. It is only when Appleby threatens to burn everything that Georgia owns that she relents, and I believe that it is only to save Georgia’s belongings that she complies. Later on in the story when Aminata is sold to Solomon Lindo, she confronts him about having sold her son – an act that struck me as extremely bold. She accuses him of selling him to a family in Savannah, and tells him, “some Hebrew you are […] are you say you’re not a white man” (227). Aminata continues to speak her mind throughout the book, which earns her respect among both black and white people. I would argue that she is more powerful than some of the men around her through her intelligence, cleverness, ability to learn new skills quickly, and her ability to repeatedly outsmart the men who seemingly have control over her. She succeeds in escaping from Solomon Lindo, her master and a very powerful man in the indigo business, as well as Alassane, the slave trader who lies about leading her to Bayo at the end of the novel. She cleverly does not reveal to Alassane that she can speak his language, and succeeds in escaping from his group in the middle of the night because she overhears him talking to the other men about his plan. Finally, at the end of the novel, the abolitionists turn to her to win their case. John Clarkson tells her that the abolitionists have had “something missing” , that “[her] voice could move thousands of people”, and that she could have a more powerful impact on Parliament than the white educated men who have been trying for years to abolish the slave trade without success. I feel that I have only scratched the surface in providing evidence for a feminist reading of the novel, but seek to show the depth of this novel and the multiple angles with which it can be approached.
I am also the discussion director for my Lit Circle, so here are some questions to lead us in discussion tomorrow:
1. Hill suggests that Aminata’s youthfulness at the time of her abduction enables her survival, while some of the adults show signs of crumbling. What comment is he making here?
2. What does Hill suggest about the nature of love and loyalty through Aminata’s marriage to Chekura and the birth of her son and daughter?
3. What does the novel tell us about survival? How does her survival relate to Pi’s?
4. Why do you think that Hill chose a woman to be the main character of his novel?
5. What are the different representations of home in the novel? What does Hill want to convey about what a “home” is?
6. What is freedom for Aminata in the novel? Physical? Verbal? Emotional? Is she ever completely free?
I’d like to start off my blog entry by simply saying that I also greatly enjoyed The Book Of Negros and I would highly recommend to anyone to pick this book up simply for the joy of reading. A foreign concept, I know, with the multiple texts we are reading for all our classes. It’s rare I ever go so far as to recommend a book as a ‘must read’.
Having said that, I’d now like to discuss the observations I made while reading The Book of Negros. While I was at it, I kept thinking that this book would serve perfectly as a central text to a subject-wide unit and was pleased to hear that Josie was able to teach the text in a Humanities class. Touching on some of the points Josie has already made, I would like to expand on them. I propose taking the text out of a single classroom taught by a single teacher, like an ordinary English or even a Humanities class, and instead having the book looked at in multiple subjects and taught by multiple teachers at the same time. There are the obvious classes like English, Social Studies/History that this book would obviously fit into but, also Geography, like previously discussed, and Philosophy, Social Justice Class, Religion (if your school had the subject), Languages, since Aminata, the main protagonist speaks at least 5 throughout the text, and many more. By doing a unit across multiple subjects, students can not only get a deeper understanding of the text but will also be subjected to multiple opinions. Also, as teachers we would be mirroring to our students the cooperation we expect when we assign them to work together. By creating a unit as a group we would be providing them with consistency throughout the study of the text.
I also think that this may cut back on one of the problems I saw in teaching the book, which is its length. I could see the Book of Negros visually looking like a daunting book for some students and that perception causing apprehension. I must admit, this is what flashed through my mind, when I picked the book up, and almost made me want to switch books just because of all the work I had to do for school. Having the book be the main text for multiple subjects may actually help with perception, since we would be cutting down to ‘one’ the number of books the students would need for that unit.
Lastly, though the language of the book is fairly simple, the violence in it is not overly graphic and the story is not difficult to follow, I still would probably recommend the book for Grade 11 or 12’s. I know Josie said she did this book with grade 10 but I understand those students were part of a mini-school. The subject matter is still rather heavy and when discussing the text we all brought up the fact that we had to put the book down at curtain times because it just got to be too much.
Again, this is a magnificent book and I personally can’t wait to teach it in the classroom. Out of all the books and literature we have gone over in this class this book makes me the most excited to teach because of the possibilities I see in teaching it.
Today in class we brainstormed a number of primary historical sources that could work very well to teach alongside The Book of Negroes. The following are slave narratives, and the last is the diary of a slave master which was originally written in code and was never intended to be read by anyone else:
-Phyllis Wheatley – various poems including”An Address to the Atheist” and “An Address to the Deist”
-Frederik Douglass – My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
-The Diary of Bennet H. Barrow