The Book of Negros Blog post #1 -Sarah L

The Book of Negros is a story that show bravery, perseverance, and the fight to survive. What I have read of the book so far its starts off with Aminata Diallo the main character who is now in her later years of life and is now living in London England. Aminata is now writing and reflecting back on her life and childhood experiences that changed her life. She shares the struggle of growing up in a third world country-Africa in a small town called Bayo. Bayo is a small undeveloped town that is in poverty and constantly being destroy by different authorities. Aminata shares her struggles and happy moments of being an only child with her parents. She loved spending time with her mother and learning how to "catch babies"which was very helpful in her community. Then tragedy stuck her and her mother one day on the way home after 'catching babies' in another village. It ultimately ended in both her mother and father's deaths and the destruction of her small community in Bayo.

Making different predictions I think that Aminata will have to undergo some different circumstance that will be physically and mentally challenging and also bring her close to her own death. But because of her own strength and metal encouragement she will be able to fight through and eventually make it to safety in other countries and get to London England where she is currently living at an elderly age.

The Book of Negros reminds me of the book "The Help" By Kathryn Stockett which I read last year and have seen the movie multiple times. Both stories connect together as they tell the stories of african american peoples who struggle to be notice and treaty with respect and dignity. The Help is a moving story about individual hired help to young mother that takes place in the Southern United States. The hired help gets treated with no respect and are forced to use separate washrooms simply because of the racial divide. So far this fits with The Book of Negros as they are both effect the African population and are forced to live and work in slavery and are told what to do by people that have authority over them.

After reading the beginning of The Book of Negros the imagery that I have is a place where happiness no longer exists and people work long hard days just to only survive on very little. I picture them to live in small run down huts made from dirt, sticks and mud. I see them having very little of clothing and things and just making it work with what they have.

I think the author is trying to help the reader to see what living in the end 1700 was like, in the perspective of young girl. How she saw the world and the community that she lived and the positive and negative aspects of her life. As well to give the reader perspective on the cultures and lifestyles of living in Africa.

After reading the first part of this story its hard to believe that parts of our world still live in such poverty and destruction even though this story takes place so many hundreds of years. As well lots of people live being mistreated and attack for the only reason being their religion, gender, or race. This is inhuman and should have never happened and definitely should not still be happening.

As a reader my weaknesses are that I struggle to stay focus when reading for long periods of time. And sometimes find myself re-reading lots of different parts because I didn't fully take it in the first time. My strengths when reading this story is that I am generally interested in this topic and I have enjoyed the story line so far.