This book is titled Someone Knows My Name in the United States
If there is any one book I’ve been itching to read for quite some time, this is it. I finally got my hot, little hands on a copy I won with my public library in a summer reading program, whoot! It’s a beautiful, trade paperback with the offset pages (which look nice on a shelf but I find terribly hard to turn). Zoomed through this, with some incentive from my mom-in-law who said she had begun it and was already on page 70. Of course, she won. And now we’re both finished reading it, lets’ get to what it was about.
Gist of the Story (Spoilers Ahead)
Aminata Diallo, or Meena for short, is an 11-year old girl happy with her life in the village Bayo in Northern Africa. She is a Muslim, learning the language for the Qu’ran from her father and how to deliver babies from her mother. She is a cherished child.
Slave-traders capture her and kill both her mother and father. She walks for nearly three months to get to the coast where she boards a slave vessel bound for Charles Town (Charleston). Much of what happens on the journey is almost exactly like Amistad, the movie. Very thrilling, tense scenes.
Once she arrives in the United States, things progress much like Roots, the book by Alex Haley (and TV mini-series with Jordi from Star Trek). Meena’s existence is very hard but she doesn’t seem to get the extreme punishments we see portrayed in film regarding this era. I don’t believe the book ever mentions Meena ever being whipped. She almost seems to make her own good fortune as most people she meets are eager to help her do more in life – learn to read, discover more about her homeland, farm, survive on the farm or in the city, find work, etc. I wouldn’t go so far to say that Meena had a good life, but it surprised me how good it was at times, considering her situation. She stays true to her husband and has two children by him and never falls in love with another. Her faith is a bit of a mystery, picked up and dropped and picked up again and then never really mentioned.
She travels a lot. From Charles Town, she travels to one of the nearby islands, then back to Charles Town, then to New York, to Nova Scotia, to Sierra Leone and then finally to London where she helps William Wilburforce (see the movie Amazing Grace) gain strength to lend to the end of slavery.
The book moves along as expected, with suffering and loss, small joys and then a return to suffering and loss. I won’t spoil those exact losses as the story is written beautifully enough to keep the reader moving forward. This book was originally titles Someone Knows My Name and won the Canada Reads award for 2009 and the Commonwealth Prize for Best Overall Book. So, if this review doesn’t convince you, that should. This story moves so fast, you’ll be finished this 470 page story within a week.
First Lines, Last Words
I seem to have trouble dying.
They can wake me with the news, when they come home.
Quotable
To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.
Book Rating
Beside the Bed When I’m Dead: 4.7
Sleepless for the Story: 4.85
Regifting this Read: 4.5. This one only scored as low as it did because of the new title of the book. It catches your eye…but some may find it offensive.
Overall Rating: 4.67
See my book ratings chart in title bar to see how these categories work.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
