The Book of Negroes

Sullivan’s Island, 1757. The toubabu bring Aminata and the other homelanders to an island off the coast, imprisoning them in a guarded pen. Though the other homelanders seem to grow healthier each day, Aminata grows weaker. The toubabu feed the homelanders daily, but Aminata hardly has an appetite. Biton, Chekura, and Fanta all urge her to eat. Aminata resists Fanta’s attempts to care for her, unable to forget the horrific acts Fanta committed aboard the ship. The toubabu watch the homelanders closely, and they beat those who refuse to eat and to rub oil into their cracked skin. When Aminata tries to pray, Biton orders her to stop, because he recently saw a homelander get beaten for praying. She tries to pray in her head, but doing so brings her no solace.

The homelanders eat their meals together around communal buckets, but Fanta scowls at Fomba until he trudges off to eat on his own. Biton reprimands her, insisting that Fomba eat with them. Fomba might have been an enslaved man in Bayo, but they’re all captives here. Fanta grumbles that she is “freeborn.”

One day, a new ship arrives at the island to transport the captives to the mainland. The toubabu give the captives clothes to wear, made of a scratchy and uncomfortable fabric. They shove plugs off grass up the behinds of those suffering from diarrhea, including Aminata.  Then the toubabu round up the captives and lead them onto the ship headed to the mainland. In addition to toubabu, Aminata is shocked to see homelanders everywhere, performing various tasks, and none of them are shackled. Meanwhile, toubabu boys heckle and throw rocks at the newly arrived homelanders. Aminata looks around and sees people trading goods of all kinds: grains, hay, nails, livestock.

The toubabu pack the homelanders into an open space. When the toubabu separate the strong homelanders from the weak, Aminata and Fomba are torn apart from Chekura, Fanta, and Biton. Then the toubabu start leading the healthy homelanders onto a platform. Various toubabu shout, and then the homelander men are led down from the platform and herded elsewhere. When it’s Biton’s turn, a toubab squeezes Biton’s bicep and lifts his cloth to examine his penis. Then he, too, is led off the platform. Later, Fanta is marched to the platform. She cries out when the men try to examine her private parts, and they stuff a rag in her mouth. She scratches the men, drawing blood, and they bind her hands. At last, all the healthy homelanders have had their turn on the platform.

That night, the remaining homelanders cower together in the pen. Aminata wakes the next morning to a homelander poking her with a stick and motioning for her to move. The frail homelanders are lined up, then the toubabu approach them and tie ropes around their waists. A toubab man leads Fomba, Aminata, and some others to a horse-drawn cart, affixing their ropes to the cart. Then he taps the horse to go, and the homelanders all start to walk.

The group travels all day, with no breaks for food or water. The land is wet and surrounded by swamps—it’s so different from Aminata’s homeland. At night they finally stop to rest. Aminata sits down beside a homelander woman who works for the toubab. Though they can’t understand each other’s language, the woman looks friendly and puts her arm around Aminata, comforting her. She points at herself and identifies herself as Tala. Then she points at different things around her and speaks their word aloud: moon, water, stars. 

The next morning, the journey continues. They encounter many homelanders along the way, and they’re all chained. Tala recognizes one man and calls out to him. The man is working alongside others, overseen by a toubab, but he shouts back. They seem to be calling out names of people they know in common. Aminata tries to spot people she recognizes as native to her homeland, and on the second day she sees a woman who looks to be a Bamana. She calls out to the woman, who is delighted to be addressed in her native Bamanankan. Aminata asks the woman where they’re going, but the woman only cryptically mentions something about a “fishnet.”

Eventually the group reaches a river and boards a boat. Aminata chats with one of the homelanders rowing, who explains that “the fishnet” refers to how the homelanders communicate with one another by passing along messages from person to person. The man compliments the moon scars on Aminata’s face but says that here they don’t use “country marks” as they do in “Africa,” a word unfamiliar to Aminata. The man explains it to her, adding that here, every person with African heritage is the same to the toubabu: they’re all “niggers, Negroes.” Aminata can’t wrap her head around this and tries to argue. The man’s expression darkens, and he advises her to keep her head down and follow orders. Disobedience will only cause Aminata and the others harm. The man returns to his rowing, and after a while, the boat arrives at an island.