The best words in the best order

I would like to share some quotes from The Book of Negroes, which I found to be really significant:

“ But I had chosen freedom, with all its insecurities, and nothing in the world would make me turn away from it” (Hill 352)

“ Bayo I could live without. But for freedom I would die” (Hill 495)

Basically, these quotes  comprise the whole Aminata’s life. Through all the long and exhausting journey of Aminata, freedom  always was her biggest dream and desire, something she knows about but hadn’t really tried its taste.  I believe that these words display the most important quality of Aminata, something that helped her to stray strong and move forward – struggle.  Moreover, I am sure that Aminata, in some point, can be a good role model for everyone, because she reached her dream despite all the obstacles on her way. This words is a good example how your desire and struggle can lead you to success.

“ You need something to ugly you up. You are like a flower now, and that is ain’t good”(Hill 168).

This quote shows how defenseless the African women were to sexual abuse.  How absurd it may sound, but it simply means that the more attractive you are – the more risk you have to be raped and dishonored. This is just terrible.

“ It’s against the law to kill those birds. People have value them, because they make off with foul carrion. They clean our streets for free”. ( Hill 213)

Frankly speaking, I find this quote to be one of the most important and significant in the novel, because it represents the whole concept of moral values of people of that time. People owned other people, they were murdering them, leaving their bodies on the streets, and it was absolutely normal, while killing a bird was against the law.  This quote makes me think of how pure the moral level was, and it makes me think that people were just hurtles. But this is a historical fact, and I feel frustrated when realize that this took part in the history of mankind. 

My Great ISU novel ( A Thousand Splendid Suns)

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mrs. Chausse, who helped me to choose my ISU book, which is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  I was pretty lucky with my ISU choice, because namely this novel has a huge amount of themes and problems, which are also present in The Book of Negroes.

So, A Thousand Splendid Suns tells a story about two girls, Mariam and Laila, who are forced to accept and survive in the cruel, strict conditions of Muslim culture and society of Afghanistan. However, this book tells much more than just a story of two little girls. It expresses the mood and the culture of the society of Afghanistan , it shows the absurd moral customs, which used to be ( and still are) the rules fro all the people living there. Just like  in The Book of Negroes, where on the example of Aminata Lawrence Hill displays the epoch of slavery and discrimination of people, Khaled Hosseini shows how women were suffering and literally perishing, being oppressed by the men. This can be actually compered to slavery, because they didn’t have any freedom, rights, and space, they were beaten and told what to do.

But what I find the most outrageous is that these horrible events, described in the book, were happening in the late 1990^th, which is less than 25 years ago. Reading The Book of Negroes I didn’t actually think about the question of time, because it seemed to me that slavery disappeared many years ago, when people were  just getting the understanding of moral values. But having read A Thousand Splendid Suns , I was literally depressed by the feeling, that nowadays, in the 21^st century, people are still faced with such a big moral problems as discrimination, slavery, and oppressing only because of their race and gander.

Anyways, I found this novel to be very morally difficult, emotionally strong, but extremely interesting to read. Moreover, the book provides a reader with a huge amount of historical facts, and background of Afghanistan culture. This novel has a lot of themes such as love, the loss of parents, motherhood, etc. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes to read.

PS : thanks to Mrs Chausse J

The Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus Complex is a disturbing term related to the play we are studying in class, Oedipus Rex. The Oedipus Complex is a term used by Sigmund Freud to explain his theory in psychosexual stages of development. Basically, the Oedipus Complex can be described as a boy having feelings, affections, and desires for his mother, and feeling hate and anger towards his father. The boy starts to feel in competition with his father, fighting for his mother’s attention. Although this is sickly, it can be resolved. What happens for this to be resolved is the boy starts to identify with his father, learning the differences between a male and a female. After this is done, the boy forms a super-ego. While reading Oedipus Rex, I found it disturbing that he killed his father and married his mother, and as I researched more about the Oedipus Complex it explained a lot to me. It is quite interesting to read about Freud’s theory on this, and how it can be resolved.

Social experiments

The Zimbardo's Prison Experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. Random male students were chosen to take part in this experiment, where they took roles of being prisoners and guards. The guards would act as authority and bring upon psychological torture to the prisoners. Some prisoners accepted the torture and would start to harass other prisoners who were not willing to accept being tortured at any cost. This experiment connects to The Book of Negroes because in the novel, events taking place on the ship were brutal because the people who were being tortured did not look to be tortured. The people, who were captured into British slavery, accepted that the torture was going to keep happening. They did not want to accept it but had to. One difference is that the prisoners did not harass other prisoners, only because it would not be fair, but only could accept this was their destiny.

The title of The Book of Negroes

A few days ago we started reading a new book in the English class.  This book is a historically based novel, which contains a lot of interesting and outrageous historical facts about the life and customs of the people of 19^th century.  But a controversial debate had occurred in the class even before we started reading.

The name of the novel is The Book of Negroes and a lot of people find this title to be very offensive and insulting.  As we know, in some countries it was even decided to change the original title for “Someone knows my name”, “ Aminata”, etc.

            Frankly speaking, I don’t find this title to be offensive at all. Moreover, I believe that this title carries the promise of the book, it has a significant historical meaning, and it, somehow, provokes you to read it.  This title is as scandalous and outrageous as the actual events described in the book are. Also, as we know “ The Book of Negroes” was originally the name of a unique historical document, and I think it is at least thanklessly to assume the history as something offensive. No matter how it affects your personal feelings, history is something everyone should know and respect.   Therefore, I believe that namely this title makes the book even more significant to all readers.