Ama

by Manu Herbstein

Nominated by:

• Ghana Library Board, Accra, Ghana
  

African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. The European
discovery and colonization of the Americas set the scene for the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. In the course of three hundred years, from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth century, upwards of ten million black men, women
and children arrived in the Americas as unwilling migrants. Millions more
died on the journey to the Atlantic coast, and at sea.

The slaves were all African. So too were most of those who first
sold them. The buyers and shippers were Europeans.

Few of the slaves were permitted to acquire the skills needed to
preserve their stories for posterity; and those who did, wrote with European
quills and European ink on European paper.

What of the vast majority? What of those whose literary traditions
were oral rather than written, and who never accepted the religion and
culture of their oppressors? Their stories are lost for ever.

This novel is an attempt to recreate the experience of enslavement
and resistance, seen from the point of view of one African slave.

In 1772, the musketeers of the army of the Asante Confederacy
vanquish the archers and cavalry of the Kingdom of Dagomba. The victor
exacts from the defeated enemy an annual tribute of five hundred slaves.

Ama, then known by her birth-name, Nandzi, is left alone to care for
her baby brother. She is captured, raped and enslaved. Her name is taken
from her. She fights back; she is defeated. She escapes; and is recaptured.
From the moment when she loses her freedom, her life oscillates between
resistance to her successive owners and a reluctant accommodation to their
power. The Dagomba give her to the Asante; the Asante sell her to the Dutch.
On board an English slave ship, she instigates a rebellion; and suffers a
terrible retribution when it fails. In Brazil, where eighteen-hour work
shifts send slaves to an early death, she attempts to build a new life.
Sustained by ancient beliefs, Ama's spirit never wavers. Enslaved she might
have been, but to herself she is never a slave.