Someone Knows My Name: Summary and book reviews of Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill, plus links to an excerpt from Someone Knows My Name and a biography of Lawrence Hill.
Someone Knows My Name aka: The Book of Negroes
by Lawrence Hill
Hardcover: Nov 2007,
512 pages.
Paperback: Nov 2008,
512 pages.
Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom—and of the knowledge she needs to get home. Sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence, Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan, Aminata helps pen the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks rewarded for service to the king with safe passage to Nova Scotia. There Aminata finds a life of hardship and stinging prejudice. When the British abolitionists come looking for "adventurers" to create a new colony in Sierra Leone, Aminata assists in moving 1,200 Nova Scotians to Africa and aiding the abolitionist cause by revealing the realities of slavery to the British public. This captivating story of one woman's remarkable experience spans six decades and three continents and brings to life a crucial chapter in world history.
BookBrowse note: Originally published in Canada as The Book of Negroes, published in the USA as Someone Knows My Name.
Turning the pages of Hill's book is effortless in one sense and very difficult in another. Protagonist Aminata Diallo's desire for freedom is unquenchable, her drive inspiring and superhuman. The losses she experiences, however, are just as potent as her will. Brief joys of love and family are suffocated by mourning time and time again. Some scenes approach the threshold of heartache plausible for one soul to bear, requiring Hill to find or create a new purpose for Aminata's fight for life and freedom to continue. Most often, her rare literacy and gift for languages is her saving grace, offering a welcome nod to the power of reading and writing to change a life – or the direction of an entire nation. (Reviewed by Stacey Brownlie).
The New York Times - Nancy Kline
Wonderfully written ... In Someone Knows My Name, as in the slave narratives that inspired it, language is power. The slave owner marks the bodies of those he owns, but when the enslaved take possession of words, spoken and - especially - written, they move toward freedom.
The Boston Globe - Julie Wittes Schlack
Aminata is an eloquent guide to 70 years of turbulent history spanning three continents. And while her uncanny proximity to the real slave traders, British officers, black freedom fighters, and English abolitionists strains credulity, this flaw (common to much historical fiction) pales next to the power of her story.
Entertainment Weekly - Jennifer Reese
Hill makes Aminata such a terrific character, you believe she could have pulled it off. And through her curious eyes, a terrifying patch of history comes to vivid life. A-
Library Journal
Aminata is simply too noble to be believable, and other major characters are mainly symbolic. Nevertheless, Hill's fascinating source material makes this a good choice for book clubs and discussion groups.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In depicting a woman who survives history's most trying conditions through force of intelligence and personality, Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force.
Literary Review of Canada
Somewhere around page 389 of Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, I realized I had become so completely engrossed in his masterful telling of the hard life and crueler times of Aminata Diallo that I had forgotten I was reading a novel. But I was. And it is a brilliant one...Aminata is an amazing literary creation.
The Globe and Mail The Book of Negroes is a masterpiece, daring and impressive in its geographic, historical and human reach, convincing in its narrative art and detail, necessary for imagining the real beyond the traces left by history.
The Toronto Star - Donna Bailey Nurse
Of course fiction, especially historical fiction, contains all manner of facts. What makes The Book of Negroes extraordinary is Hill's ability to transcend the facts – to make something magical out of them. Despite the unpalatable subject matter, he compels our attention and manages to delight. His Aminata is a heroic figure, a little larger than life, residing within and outside of history. You can never forget this character. She embeds herself in your heart.
The Calgary Herald
Anna Karenina. Hagar Shipley. Aminata Diallo....the exclusive club that includes literature's most memorable characters now has a remarkable new member.
Austin Clarke, author of The Polished Hoe
You feel you are turning the pages of history, the pages of truth.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Phyllis Rhodes Outstanding Historical Fiction!!! The actual Book of Negroes is an amazing historical document, a British military ledger that contains the names and descriptions of 3,000 men, women, and children who served or were supported by the British during the American Revolutionary... Read More
Rated of 5
by Mercedes Someone Knows My Name A powerful historically accurate book that brings alive the life of one woman enduring the emotional and physical hardships of slavery - written so well and so lyrically that we feel and see all she does - we are there - it is a visceral experience... Read More
Rated of 5
by lori Great Book This book is a page turner. The story flows as though you are watching it playout. The main character steals your heart and makes you care about what happens to her. Even if your are not history buff, you will LOVE this book.
Rated of 5
by Kim Excellent historical fiction When Memoirs of a Geisha was published several years ago, much was made of the fact that the author was male. Many found it difficult to believe that a man could write the story of a woman so authentically. I had that same experience reading... Read More
Rated of 5
by Kate Someone Knows My Name Someone Knows My Name is a story that fills the reader with so many emotions,it is hard to identify what you are feeling while reading it. The story draws you in from page one and takes you on an amazing journey across many oceans and... Read More
Rated of 5
by Kate Someone Knows My Name Someone Knows My Name is a story that fills the reader with so many emotions,it is hard to identify what you are feeling while reading it. The story draws you in from page one and takes you on an amazing journey across many oceans and... Read More
Original copies of the
Book of Negroes can
be found in England at the
Public Records Office, in
the United States in the
National Archives and in
Canada in the Nova Scotia
Archives. It has also been
transcribed in full and made
available on the
Black Loyalists web site.
The Book is a 150 page
record containing just under
3,000 names and brief
descriptions of those blacks
who were to be transferred
to a smattering of
British-held villages in
Nova Scotia. The official
proclamation of freedom
to slaves who would aid the
British war effort came from
the Virginia colony
governor, Lord Dunmore, who
promised Black Loyalists...
A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.
A powerful, sensuously written novel that, through the lives of women, beautifully captures Africa’s past and present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live.
These are 2 of the 14 readalike suggestions for Someone Knows My Name. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
First time novelist Vaddey Ratner captured my heart and senses in this novel based on her childhood in Cambodia. Her story transcends any news story...
read more
From the first page, I was drawn in by the lyrical writing of the author and mesmerized as the narrator, eight year old Raami, remembered the years...
read more
Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part...
read more
Amazon cuts off 5200 affiliates in Minnesota(Jun 19 2013) With Minnesota's online sales tax law due to take effect July 1, Amazon has played a familiar card by cutting ties with 5,200 members of its Associates...
Full Story
BookBrowse
(1237 words).
Library Journal
Austin Clarke, author of The Polished Hoe
of 5
by Phyllis Rhodes
Write your own review!
