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Mamed
May is Aminata and Chekura’s daughter. Aminata gives birth to her in Nova Scotia, where she resettles following the Revolutionary War. May is a happy and affectionate child. Aminata brings her along to her housekeeping job at the Witherspoons’ house in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and the child takes to Mrs. Witherspoon. When race riots break out in Shelburne, however, the Witherspoons effectively kidnap the young girl, taking her with them when they flee the city to escape the ongoing race riots. May reunites with her mother decades later in London, where Aminata is doing work for the abolitionists and where May has for years lived with the Witherspoons.
May Quotes in The Book of Negroes
The The Book of Negroes quotes below are all either spoken by May or refer to May . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 3, Chapter 5 Quotes
Don’t get too close to white folks,” Daddy Moses would warn me. “They can be fair-weathered friends.” Fair weathered or not, salaries paid by McArdle and the Witherspoons helped keep my daughter and me alive and often went to support others, such as Daddy Moses. I was still delivering babies in Birchtown, but it had been a long time since anyone could pay me.
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Book 4, Chapter 5 Quotes
“You learned to read and write,” I said.
May said she remembered me scratching out words for her to practise. “I knew how much you loved words, Mama, and I wanted to love them too.”
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May Character Timeline in The Book of Negroes
The timeline below shows where the character May appears in The Book of Negroes. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 3, Chapter 5
Aminata names her baby May, after the month in which she was born. She keeps May swaddled against her back...
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By the time May is one year old, Aminata has saved up enough money to take a trip to...
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...Witherspoon is forced to shutter his whaling business. One night in late July, Aminata and May are walking home from the Witherspoons’ house when they witness some White men antagonizing a...
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...destroyed by the mob. On the third day, she sets out for Shelburne to retrieve May. On the walk over, though, Aminata hears loud male voices ahead of her. She ducks...
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...Boston, and they’d been planning to for ages—he thought Aminata knew. He also confirms that May was with them when they left. Aminata is shocked and heartbroken. Aminata pleads for McArdle...
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...their own homes. Later, with McArdle’s help, Aminata places ads in various newspapers inquiring after May. She even writes to Sam Fraunces, who has been working for George Washington in Virginia....
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Book 3, Chapter 6
...opportunity, but she knows that if she returns to Africa, she won’t see Chekura or May again.
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...Sierra Leone. She explains about her missing daughter and husband. Clarkson can’t do much about May, but he offers to look through naval records for information on Chekura’s ship. Aminata is...
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Book 4, Chapter 5
...more closely at the young woman and sees something familiar in her facial features. It’s May. “Mama, I have been waiting for years,” May exclaims, embracing Aminata with the force of...
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Aminata and May spend the next two days together, sleeping in the same bed and taking all their...
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Aminata’s fever returns, and May moves in with her and serves as her caregiver. The abolitionists pay for mother and...
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Aminata, addressing her manuscript’s readers, announces that she is finally finished with her story. May, who is asleep in the next room, has recently told Aminata that she has a...
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