Someone Knows My Name, By Lawrence Hill

In the history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, there has been 12.5 million slaves. No one could possibly imagine the terrifying moments any slave has experienced throughout their lifetime. The horrors of slavery cannot be erased from one who has experienced the brutality. The Book of Negroes, or also called Someone Knows my Name by Lawrence Hill, is a true story with the addition of some fictional characters about slavery in Africa, the South Atlantic Ocean, Britain, Canada, and the United States of America. Aminata Diallo is an eleven year old girl from a village in West Africa who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. She is forced to walk months in chains until she gets on a ship that leads her to St. Helena Island, ending up in South Carolina where she is enslaved.

The author is overall able to effectively describe the story of the novel due to the use of characterization, tone, and style.

When she first appears in the novel, Aminata is a young girl who is the loving daughter of her father, Mamadu Diallo, and her mother, Sira Kulibali. In the novel, Aminata is described as an ambitious and knowledgeable girl who wants to discover new things and make use of her skills. In the novel she states, “to gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.”(Hill 21). This statement talks about how she does not understand how someone can possibly kidnap another human being and treat them like they are worthless. This makes her character really strong and mature which is important because it gives you an