DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON EXAMINING THEMES OF RESISTANCE AND HEALING IN YAA GYASI’S HOMEGOING AND MANU HERBSTEIN’S AMA: A STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE BY SANDRA BOATENG (10803879) THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF MPHIL ENGLISH DEGREE JULY 2022 i DECLARATION I, Sandra Boateng, do declare that, apart from the references from other works which have been duly acknowledged, this thesis is entirely the result of my original research. I have neither submitted this work in part nor whole for the award of another degree elsewhere. ………………… ……………………. Sandra Boateng (10803879) 4 December 2023 ii CERTIFICATION We hereby certify that this thesis was supervised in accordance with the procedures laid down by the University of Ghana. DR. JOSEPH BROOKMAN AMISSAH-ARTHUR Date …………………………. (PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR) …………………….. Date…………………………… DR. KWABENA OPOKU-AGYEMANG (CO-SUPERVISOR) …………………….. 4 December 2023 4 December 2023 iii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my lovely grandmother, my priceless mother and my late father. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Let all that I am praise God; may I never forget the good things he does for me.” Psalm 103:2 I praise the Almighty God, whose love and grace have been my sources of inspiration through my post graduate education. There were times I lost hope, but He saw me through. Without the patience, mentoring, constructive criticisms and suggestions from my supervisors, Dr. Joseph Brookman Amissah-Arthur and Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang, I would never have piloted this thesis ship. I would always be grateful for their priceless support and contributions. My special profound gratitude also goes to the Head of Department of English, Dr. Augustina Edem Dzregah, without whom I would have given up on my MPhil programme; Aloysius Denkabe, for recommending Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, and to all the lecturers especially, Professor Kofi Anyidoho, Professor Helen Yitah, and Professor Cristina Ruotolo who spurred my interest in this research area. You have led me to surmount one of the most valuable academic ladders everyone would want to climb. Advice and encouragement from exceptional friends and course mates such as Emelia, Halilatu, Eyram, Dela, Delali, Obeng, Joseph, Meshach, Emmanuel, Frank, Latif, and others, who for brevity of space, I cannot mention also contributed to making this thesis successful. You are friends worth keeping forever. I would like to acknowledge the selfless support, love and prayers of my grandmother, Miss. Grace Gyafo, my mother, Miss. Janet Asiedu, and my uncle, Rev. Dr. Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu. Finally, I thank my siblings especially, Kimble, Yvonne, Bright, Elijah and Elisha for their contribution in varied ways. May God continue to shower his blessings on each one of you. v ABSTRACT The theme of Transatlantic Slave Trade has been a subject of discussion not only in history but in many literary works such as music, novels, painting, drama and poems. This has contributed to the establishment of an interrelationship between history and fiction. The various material and natural settings such as castles, ships, and plantation that made the slave trade possible have featured in many literary works as well. In literature, the slave narratives that arose after the abolition of the slave trade have undergone lots of transformation. While the traditional slave narratives are written in autobiographical form by enslaved Africans who battled against such an atrocious history, the neo-slave narratives are fictive works that share the theme of slavery. Prominent themes such as female identity, racism, sexual violence, the quest for freedom, resistance and healing are dominant in both traditional and neo-slave narratives, but studies have mainly explored these themes in the traditional slave narratives. Yaa Gyasi and Manu Herbstein in their respective neo-slave narratives, Homegoing and Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, develop their characters based on the history of Transatlantic Slave Trade and how actions in historical items such as slave castles, slave ships and plantations reveal the themes of resistance and healing. Drawing from the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope and Henri Lefebvre’s concept of space, the present study explores the depictions of the slave castles, slave ships and slave plantation in Gyasi’s Homegoing and Herbstein’s Ama and comes to the conclusion that the representations of these historical items reveal the themes of resistance and healing which are relevant to the contemporary world. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ............................................................................................................................. i CERTIFICATION .......................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... v CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background of the Study .......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Neo-Slave Narratives ................................................................................................................ 5 1.3 Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................................ 10 1.4 Significance/ Justification of the Study .................................................................................. 10 1.5 Research Objectives ................................................................................................................ 11 1.6 Research Questions ................................................................................................................. 12 1.7 Scope of the Study .................................................................................................................. 12 1.8 Critical Synopses of the Select Set of Texts ........................................................................... 12 1.9 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................... 14 1.10 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 16 1.11 Structure of the Project ......................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................................................................... 18 2.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 18 2.1 Sources of Slavery from Medieval Times to the Transatlantic Slave Trade .......................... 18 2.2 Historical Sources on Slave Forts, Ships and Plantations....................................................... 22 vii 2.2.1 Slave Castles ........................................................................................................................ 22 2.2.2 Slave Ship ............................................................................................................................ 26 2.2.3 Plantations ............................................................................................................................ 33 2.3 Forms of Resistance on the African Continent, Castles, Ships and Plantations ..................... 38 2.4 Literary Sources on Representations of Slavery ..................................................................... 43 2.5 Critical Perspectives on Homegoing and Ama ........................................................................ 52 2.6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER THREE ...................................................................................................................... 57 3.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 57 3.1 Cape Coast Castle and Ships as Spatial Practices and Representations of Space in Homegoing ....................................................................................................................................................... 57 3.2 Hell and Thomas Allan Stockham’s Alabama Plantations as Spatial Practices and Representations of Space .............................................................................................................. 61 3.3 Castle, Ships and Plantation as Lived Space (Chronotopes of Solace, Torture, Pain, Shame and Violence) ....................................................................................................................................... 63 3.3.1 Representations of Castles and Ships as Lived Spaces in Homegoing ................................ 63 3.3.2 Hell and Thomas Allan Stockham’s Alabama Plantations as Lived Spaces ....................... 76 3.4 Chronotopes of Resistance ...................................................................................................... 79 3.4.1 Cape Coast Castle ................................................................................................................ 80 3.4.2 Resistance on the Hell Plantation ........................................................................................ 81 3.4.3 Stockham’s Plantation ......................................................................................................... 82 3.5 Theme of Healing in Homegoing ............................................................................................ 83 3.5.1 Fire, Black Stone Pendant, and Water ................................................................................. 84 viii CHAPTER FOUR ......................................................................................................................... 95 4.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 95 4.1 Castle, Ship, and Plantation as Spatial Practices and Conceived Spaces in Ama ................... 95 4.2 The Elmina Castle as a Spatial Practice and Conceived Space .............................................. 96 4.2.1 The Love of Liberty ........................................................................................................... 100 4.2.2 Engenho de Cima ............................................................................................................... 102 4.3 Castle, Ship, and Plantation as Lived Spaces (Chronotopes of Torture, Solace, Pain, and Violence) ..................................................................................................................................... 103 4.3.1 Chronotopes of Solace, Torture, Pain, Shame, and Violence in Ama ............................... 103 4.3.2 The Love of Liberty as a Chronotope of Violence ............................................................ 111 4.3.3 Engenho de Cima as a Chronotope of Violence ................................................................ 117 4.4 Chronotopes of Resistance .................................................................................................... 118 4.4.1 The Elmina Castle .............................................................................................................. 119 4.4.2 The Love of Liberty ........................................................................................................... 121 4.4.3 Engenho de Cima ............................................................................................................... 124 4.5 The Theme of Healing in Ama .............................................................................................. 125 4.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 128 CHAPTER FIVE ........................................................................................................................ 129 5.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 129 5.1 Findings in Homegoing and Ama: a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade ................................ 129 5.2 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 131 5.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 132 5.4 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 133 ix WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 134 1 CHAPTER ONE 1.0 Introduction This chapter represents the first section of the thesis. It introduces the background of the study, statement of the problem, justification of the study, research objectives and questions that guide the study. It also presents what neo-slave narratives are and the summary of the selected texts. Lastly, it provides the theoretical framework and the methodology. 1.1 Background of the Study I read Herbstein’s novel just prior to departing the US for Ghana. The novel is so well written that I actually felt as if I’d been at Elmina castle and travelled the dark African night with Nandzi. Upon entering the castle at Elmina, strangely, I knew my way around. Everything was exactly as pictured in my mind’s eye. I connected with the novel’s protagonist and had a re-new-ed pride in the spirit of my ancestors. It is well worth struggling through the unfamiliar names to discover the familiar in the human spirit that spans the ages. (Chris Pierson1) Slavery has been a belligerent theme or subject not only in the economic and political realms of Africa and Europe but also a central part of the cultural, social and aesthetic representations in the world at large2. According to Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for instance, is “a living wound under the patchwork of scars” (1). Though many times and seasons have passed, its traumatic memory refuses to leave the minds of the descendants of the enslaved in both Africa and the African diaspora, and, also, the descendants of slave owners. Literature has contributed significantly to keeping this memory alive. The quote 1 A review of Ama online http://www.ama.africatoday.com/reviews_m.htm. 2 Bortolot, Ives Alexander. “The Transatlantic Slave Trade”; Nunn, Nathan. “Understanding the Long-run Effects of Africa’s Slave Trade”; Dhar, Nandini. “Re-Imagining and Re-Writing Slavery.” 129. http://www.ama.africatoday.com/reviews_m.htm 2 above, for instance, is a review by an African American, Chris Pierson, after reading Manu Herbstein’s neo-slave narrative, Ama: a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade and after visiting the Elmina Castle. His comment reveals not only the aesthetic qualities of Literature in representing slavery but, also its role in leaving an impact on readers who seem to have connections with this lasting legacy. Most importantly, Literature, in representing the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade through the use of historical sites, enables both diasporic and continental Africans to form an emotional or spiritual connection with this history. Historian Hayden White opines that narratives play an important role in representing history because they become true representations of human experiences due to their imaginative and creative nature. Scholars such as Rosemary Jolly and Derek Attridge, also, suggest the need “for literature to represent the victimization of the oppressed in realist form” (2). This, Jolly and Attridge state, becomes an approach of speaking against any social and cultural injustices. Slavery can be viewed as both cultural and social injustice because it led to the forceful removal of Africans from their original home leading to their victimization in other places. Maria Olaussen, in Approaching Asia, posits that when authors imagine from the colonial archive and produce literature using historical subjects such as slavery, they position themselves as descendants or successors of the legacy of slavery, both literally and in the figurative sense (17). Many authors, playwrights, music artistes and poets, through their various works of art and through the concept of time and place have brought to bear on human consciousness this atrocious history. For instance, Andrew Hock Soon Ng, in Toni Morrison Beloved: Space, Architecture, Trauma, contends that Paul D’s heart and Sethe’s house, 124 Bluestone, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, are spatially configured as “a tobacco tin lodged in the chest” in the sense that they refuse to set the characters free from the traumatic memories of slavery (232). Andrew 3 further demonstrates the interaction between “history, memory and rememory” of slavery through a dialogue between the main character Sethe and her daughter, Denver, in such spaces. In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, Mieke Bal highlights the role of art in incorporating the lacerating events of the past since art, Bal suggests, allows “mediation between the parties of the traumatizing scene” and concerned readers or listeners. Bal adds that the recipients of these accounts perform an act of memory that “is potentially healing as it calls for political and cultural solidarity in recognizing the traumatized party’s predicament” (x). Thus, films, literary fictions, popular music among other cultural expressions, not only provide key platforms for the symbolic representations of the account of the Atlantic Slave Trade, but they also represent a therapeutic performance of the angst of dislocation, disorientation and disorderliness that characterize the forcible removal of Africans from their homestead. Some forts and castles, which were used during the slave trade, sit on the shores of Elmina and Cape Coast in Ghana today. These memorial sites are permeated with heavy stains of historical, psychological and physical pain. Most importantly, they have served as metaphors in identifying the roots or home of Africans living in the diaspora. In 1979, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle as World Heritage sites to remember this slave trade (UNESCO Forts and Castles 26; Naana Opoku- Agyemang 1; Osei-Tutu 5). These castles and many other historical items such as slave ships or natural and human environments like forests and plantation have been employed by contemporary writers to foreground the activities and effects of the slave trade. Sarah Ahmed proposes in The Culture Politics of Emotions that past memories are learned by “direct and/or indirect” connections with “physical or imagined objects” (7). This assertion implies that the representations of characters’ direct and indirect contacts with historical sites of slavery such as 4 slave castles, slave ships, forests and plantations in literary and non-literary texts become crucial in exploring the emotional responses and spiritual connections of people of African descent. In Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, for example, Mona’s magical encounter with her ancestors in the dungeons in Elmina castle becomes the basis for recognizing and appreciating her past. Similarly, in Okpewho’s Call Me by My Rightful Name, Otis’ spiritual encounter with the spirit of Akimbowale, who is captured and enslaved by “white men” during the performance of the rites of his father in the forest, also becomes a space that relieves him of the chants that have made him uncomfortable for years. Also, in the Afro-Caribbean artistic context, the lyrics of reggae music constitute a vast textual repertoire where mainly, oral discourse on the memories of slavery and the quest for identity is produced and articulated (David Bousquet, 281). Jorge Giovannetti, for instance, notes how in the 1970s, the lyrics of reggae music in songs such as Burning Spear-Slavery Days, Bob Marley-Slave Driver and Bunny Wailer-Moses’ Children and many others became a persistent reminder of the throbbing past of Afro-Jamaicans/Afro-Caribbean living in subjugation (25). This allows literal and metaphorical representations of historical sites such as castles, ships and plantations in works that share the theme of slavery. William Gleason in Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race and American Literature opines that “stories rooted in specific places and housed in particular structures can tell us a great deal not only about past practices but also meanings and ideologies both shared and contested” (2). Slave narratives, in general, are one out of many narratives that are rooted in specific places and structures such as castles, forts, plantations, slave houses among others. The rise of another genre of slave narrative, neo-slave narratives, that appeared in the later part of 20th century and still trending in the 21st century has also served as alternative archives through which various ideologies 5 on slavery can be explored. The neo-slave narratives are fictional narratives that are created out of “black histories and past narratives.” There is the re-imagination of the condition of slavery which is written to connect the “receding past to the living present” (Min Pun, 58). Simon Gikandi similarly posits that literature itself can affect social life and “texts that threaten to resuscitate historical ghosts and decauterize old wounds will create new paths into imagination” (20). Neo- slave narratives put forward old wounds by exploring on a past history like the Atlantic slave trade. As slavery is explored, other themes on gender, sexuality, resistance, identity, home, repatriation become evident. We shall return to a fuller discussion on slave narratives in the next section. Slave castles, slave ships and slave plantations have been represented in contemporary slave narratives or neo-slave narratives as literary spaces that foreground themes of resistance and healing, yet this study remains underexplored. Therefore, this study resorts to chronotopes such as slave castles, slave ships and plantations of historical relevance that help to constantly shape the minds of not only characters but also all people of African descent in two neo-slave narratives. In this regard, the portrayal of time, space and place become significant concepts. The present study contends that the representations of historical sites such as castles, ships and plantations in Manu Herbstein’s Ama: a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing do not only represent the traumatic memories that come with slavery but also serve as therapeutic tools in evoking healing among all people of African descent. These texts also inspire resistance against any postcolonial hegemonic structures that seek to disempower African people. 1.2 Neo-Slave Narratives According to Orlando Patterson, enslavement in its worse was a “social death” (qtd. in Paul Lovejoy 49) that detached individuals from their motherlands and eliminated the bond among kins. Some of the enslaved who found their freedom regardless of their struggles shared their personal experiences through narratives. Henry Louis Gates Jr. describes slave narratives in general as a 6 “unique creation in the long history of human bondage, designed by a small but exceptionally gifted group of men and woman who escaped and who went on to write books about the severe conditions of their bondage” (xi). Gates outlines how past slaves wrote books about their life of enslavement by the slave masters (6-7). Slave narratives are broadly categorized into two; the antebellum and post-bellum which were broadly called traditional slave narratives. The traditional slave narratives became well known in the mid nineteenth century specifically in the United States of America. The traditional slave narratives are personal stories from people who were enslaved and were mostly written in an autobiographical mood. Some examples of classical slave narratives are Harriet Jacobs’ Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave (1845) and Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). Through these narratives, the riveting terrors of slavery are made known to all and as Gates and Nellie Mckay suggest, such narratives spoke for the “the millions of silent slaves who were still held captive throughout the South.” The other type of slave narratives is the “imaginative literature about slavery that emerged after the Civil Rights Movement” (Min Pun 57) and after the abolishment of Transatlantic slavery in 1807 (Christopher Lewis 447). In Afro-American Novel and its Tradition, Bernard Bell suggests that the neo-slave narrative, a term coined by himself, has brought into the public scope some questions concerning the relationship between modernity, colonialism, race, trauma, slavery and history writing. Bell describes neo-slave narratives as the “residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” (289). In Neo-slave Narratives, Ashraf H.A Rushdy, a renowned scholar in neo-slave narratives, defines this genre as “modern or contemporary fictional works substantially concerned with depicting the experience or effects of new world slavery” (533). Valerie Smith, in Neo-slave narratives also offers a worthwhile definition of neo-slave narratives. 7 On one hand, Smith’s definition expands the stylistic variety of neo-slave narratives and on the other hand, highlights a collective thematic thread that calls for their easy identification: [Neo-slave narratives] approach the institution of slavery from a myriad perspectives and embrace a variety of styles of writing: from realist novels grounded in historical research to speculative fiction, postmodern experiments, satire and work that combine these diverse models. Their differences notwithstanding, these texts illustrate the centrality of the history and the memory of slavery to our individual, racial, gender and cultural identities. Further, they provide a perspective on a host of issues that resonate in contemporary cultural, historical, critical and literary discourses. (168) Due to their aesthetic diversity, literary analysis of neo-slave narratives calls for intersectional and multidisciplinary readings which explain their complexity. Some neo-slave narratives also may not directly make slavery its major theme but may bring out some repercussions of slavery in the contemporary world so that change can be achieved. The neo-slave narratives, in contrast with the traditional slave narratives, are contemporary fictional stories on the slavery accounts. They are fictional because they are not written from the personal experiences of the enslaved. Authors who write these slave narratives combine fiction and historical information to present themes on slavery and any other theme that seem to subjugate a specific race or gender. In line with explanations of neo-slave narratives, Tony Morrison describes this kind of narratives as a “kind of literary archeology” and as a necessity in accessing the “interior life of slaves” through “imagination” by providing insight into the “interior life” of individuals who did not get the chance to write their history and to “fill in the blanks that the [traditional] slave narratives left” (92-94). In neo-slave narratives, there is often a fictional slave as a narrator or as a subject. It is also possible for the narrator to have ancestors who were slaves. Some neo-slave narratives are Alex Hailey’s Roots (1976), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Manu Herbstein’s Ama (2002), Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), Dionne Brand’s novel, At the Full and 8 Change of the Moon (1999), Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016). The neo-slave narratives use “leitmotifs of resistance and freedom” like the classical narratives. However, whereas the classical narratives are presented in “sentimental and biblical prose” the neo-slave narratives employ postmodern features such as “flashbacks, cyclical time, and fragmented prose” (Salamishah Tillet 913). The authors of neo- slave narratives are descendants who believe that there are repercussions of slavery. These authors, therefore, resort to their ancestry in an effort to alter the social and cultural conditions that exist today, and in the same way that their forebears employed slave narratives to end slavery, they use neo-slave narratives to effect transformation in the modern era. In A Written Song, Maria Helena Lima also adds that the neo-slave narratives whether “literary, poetic, performative, or visual” suggest that we re-examine not only a “vexed history of trauma and violence” but also urges us to reconsider “the modern history of the representation of black bodies” (146). In Black Women Writers and the American Neo-slave Narrative, Elizabeth Beaulieu asserts that neo-slave narratives put mothers “who were enslaved at the heart of the tale” by reacting against the “nineteenth century male paradigm narratives,” which she thinks have been overemphasized. (Judie Newman 29). Beaulieu cites Alex Hailey’s Roots (1976) in re-launching the story of enslavement but references Hailey’s tale as the male story since its hero, Kunte Kinte, is male, and his daughter, Kizzy, a stock character, who represents the suffering slave woman only. These narratives are often contrasted with other neo-slave narratives because authors such as Toni Morrison, Butler, Herbstein, and Gyasi put gender into focus as they validate the essence of maternity. For instance, Herbstein’s Protagonist, Ama, in Ama strives so hard to stand against all the challenges she encounters while being transported as a slave to work on the plantation in Brazil. Judith Newman further highlights the role of neo-slave narratives by stating that no matter how 9 meticulous authors of neo-slave narratives may be in slave stories production, there is an emphasis on “remapping the world, scrambling agreed definition of place or time, and drawing attention to the limits of conventional conceptions” (33). The neo-slave narrative “can take liberties with the conventions of the original slave narratives, mixing different genres in one work of literature.” This new shape of this genre provides new ways to help the “social level.” Thus, it enables literature to do important “cultural work” (Regina Behoekoe 18). The neo-slave narratives writers have remodeled this genre “to serve their contemporary goals and connect with their contemporary readers” (Rushdy 633). These roles of neo-slave narratives invite readers not to only celebrate African Americans who battle against slavery, but to also serve as an encouragement to protect descendants of enslaved Africans in making sure such an atrocious act never happen again. As Martha Craven Nussbaum observes fiction “will not give us the whole story about social justice but can be a bridge both to a vision of justice and to the social enactment of that vision” (qtd. in Behoekoe 18). The neo-slave narratives also offer a way to redress the injustices towards black bodies especially accounts on women who were enslaved and issues on sexuality and romance. As past memories of slavery are confronted, there is the possibility for the descendants to be healed because healing only comes after the past has been addressed. Rushdy summarizes the role of neo-slave narratives: Memory is how the past is recalled; memory is also how we heal from that past. […] What Morrison defines as “re-memory” is, after all, a “place in which things so bad had happened that when you went near them it would happen again” (35-36). This is what makes the story of slavery so utterly difficult a one to tell, what makes it a story one would prefer to pass on rather than to pass on to others. Yet it is also the only way to heal, as so many characters in so many of these novels discover again and again. […] And it is by sharing those stories and that history with their readers that the neo-slave narrative authors perhaps hope to heal a nation that in many ways still denies its original wound. (103) 10 The reader is, therefore, pushed to imagine and reimagine the depth of slavery and to also bring out different contestable ideologies. This allows researchers to constantly visit the subject of slavery which is seen as an umbrella where institutionalized racism or any subject that subjugates people due to their race originates. 1.3 Statement of the Problem Marcus Rediker3 suggests that “whereas scholarship on the slave trade, like the Atlantic, is vast and deep …. the history of the slave ship and its social relations which shaped and continue to shape the modern world in many ways is unknown and unnoticed” (10). Scholars4 have explored the representations of historical spaces such as castles, ships and plantations in classical slave narratives such as autobiographical novels. Themes of gender, sexuality, trauma, cultural identity and freedom in narratives that revolve around enslaved Africans have also been examined by scholars. However, the depictions of these historical places as spaces that provide resistance against all hegemonic form of relationship in neo-slave narratives and as spaces of healing for people of African descent remain underexplored. 1.4 Significance/ Justification of the Study Avery Gordon asserts in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination that “to study social life, one must confront the ghostly aspects of it” (7). Slavery in itself is a ghost that continues to haunt the present in so many ways. There is the need to investigate why contemporary writers choose slavery as their themes and also why historical spaces such as the castles, ships and slave plantations are represented in diverse ways in order to meet the demands of the contemporary world. 3 Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human Story. New York: Viking, 2007. 4 See note 1 above. 11 In his book Houses of Slaves and “Door of No Return,” Abaka states that discussions on the transatlantic experience should begin with “giant voiceless walls that sit on the countless shores of Ghana where most of the sites of memories are located in West Africa” (qtd. Kwame Essien 204). Both Herbstein and Gyasi situate their characters in these historical monuments in Ghana where slaves were kept and finally progresses to important artefacts and environments that played significant roles in the enslavement of Africans. These are slave castles, the slave ships and the slave plantations respectively. The convergences and divergences, specifically through the use of these places suggest that conducting a comparative study on how both authors present resistance and healing through the use of such sites will be very insightful. Secondly, the concept of slavery is still relevant in the contemporary global context where fascism seems to be gradually re- emerging and radical racist groups are on the rise in America, Europe and Africa. Such racist and fascist ideologies provide support for slavery and colonialism; their re-emergence implies an attempt to re-inscribe the subjugation of African peoples, re-scarification of the ‘African body’ with new wounds, and re-opening of the scars of the old wounds. Within such a context of global racial interrelations, it is important to reappraise the narratives of slavery to highlight the importance of themes of resistance and healing. 1.5 Research Objectives The study seeks to: 1. To investigate how castles, ships and plantations have been represented as historical sites of slavery in Herbstein’s Ama and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. 2. To probe how the representations of castles, ships and plantations evoke the themes of healing and resistance among people of African descent in Ama and Homegoing. 12 1.6 Research Questions 1. By what recurring tropes – metaphoric, symbolic, metonymic, psycho-spiritual– are spaces of enslavement and memory represented in Herbstein’s Ama and Gyasi’s Homegoing? 2. In what ways do the representations of the spaces of enslavement and memory serve as resistance and therapeutic agency in Ama and Homegoing? 1.7 Scope of the Study The study explores how the various chronotopes that portray the themes of resistance and healing are represented in Manu Herbstein’s Ama and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. The study focuses on the representation of specific chronotopes such as castles, ships and plantations that help to conceptualize these sites as places that produce the themes of resistance and healing. 1.8 Critical Synopses of the Select Set of Texts Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing Yaa Gyasi’s historical novel, Homegoing, set in the 18th century centres on the descendants of two half-sisters: Effia and Esi who are born in different villages in Ghana. Effia is privileged to have been wedded off to an affluent Englishman who lives in the Cape Coast Castle while Esi, captured during a slave raid, is trapped within a slave dungeon in the same castle Effia lives. Esi is later sold into slavery. Most of the descendants of Effia are left in Ghana but their lives are mixtures of anxiety and tragedy. The generation is haunted by fire, and this leads to the killing of two daughters of one of her descendants, Akua, while leaving Akua’s son, Yaw, badly scarred. Yaw leaves the village to stay in America and gets married there. His daughter, Marjorie, is trapped between two cultural identities and is also haunted by fire but when she finally travels back to Ghana to learn about her past ancestral history, she finally gets rid of her fears. The descendants of Esi encounter various challenges after Esi’s transportation to the Americans. Her daughter, Ness, is taken away from her to work on the plantation of Thomas Stockham. Ness and her 13 boyfriend, Sam, try all means to gain their freedom from the harsh treatments on the plantation. In their attempt to escape, their master tracks them and gets Sam hanged; Ness is sold to another plantation while their son, Kojo, escapes with another slave. Kojo works on a ship to survive in Alabama but is faced with racial segregations just as Marjorie. The story moves to another descendant of Esi in the 21st century named Marcus who is afraid of water because his people were transported through this same element to work as slaves in the Americas. To overcome this fear, Marcus, like Marjorie, travels back to Ghana to learn about his history to overcome his fears. Manu Herbstein’s Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade Manu Herbstein’s Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade foregrounds the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its repercussions. Set in the 18th century in Ghana, the novel revolves around a teenage female protagonist Ama also known as Nandzi, who is captured by Bedagdam slave hunters while her parents are away for a funeral. She and other abductees are taken away to Kumasi as part of the yearly tribute the Dagombas and Komkombas must pay to the Asantes. In Kumasi, she is presented as a gift to the queen mother to work as a domestic slave and is renamed Ama. Tragedy befalls Ama when the prince, the heir apparent to the Asante throne, falls in love with her. To prevent such an abomination from happening, Ama is accused by the elders of stealing the queen mother’s gold dust and is sold into slavery to the Dutch in Elmina. There, Ama is selected by the Director-General of Elmina Castle, De Bruyn, as a companion and is made to live with him upstairs while her other friends are trapped in the dungeons in the same castle. Before De Bruyn dies, he grants Ama her freedom, but his successor ignores his will and transports Ama to work on the plantations in Brazil. On the slave ship, the “Love of Liberty,” Ama and her lover, Tomba, and other enslaved Africans fight for their freedom, but they are defeated. She is sent to Salvador where 14 she works hard to gain her freedom. She utters that she will make sure to tell her son, Kwame, the story of her life, and also of her desire to return to her ancestors in Africa after she dies. 1.9 Theoretical Framework The study adopts Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope and Henri Lefebvre’s notion of space. Bakhtin is one of the distinguished scholars in the study of space within narratives. In his essay Form of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel, Bakhtin takes the concept of space from the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant’s and Albert Einstein’s Theories of Relativity. Bakhtin notes that, literally, chronotope means “time-space” (chronos meaning “time” and topos “place”) and emphasizes “the intrinsic connectedness of the temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in Literature.” To Bakhtin, time and space are inseparable and these concepts are essential categories through which human beings observe and organize the world. In his own words: In the literary artistic chronotopes, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. (Bakhtin, “Forms” 84) The quote above suggests that chronotopes express the “inseparability of time and space” in any artistic work. Time becomes a dimension of space and vice versa. Time becomes spatial in the sense that one can only perceived it when given meaning in space. Space can also be temporal because it moves in the direction of time (Esther Peeren 68). Bakhtin further notes: “the entry into the sphere of meanings is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope” (258). With this, the actions of characters in different places, at different time; or at the same places and at the same time, allow critical evaluation of the plot structure or themes. Bemong et al add to an 15 understanding of this concept by proposing that chronotope should be viewed as a specific space- time context, setting or structures that allow an author to manipulate the plot or describe the actions of the characters in a literary work (4). Blommaert similarly opines that chronotopes evoke “social and political worlds in which actions become dialogically meaningful and are evaluated and comprehended in many ways” (106). The multidimensional nature of the literary chronotopes makes it particularly useful when dealing with spaces and places such as castles, ships and plantations in Homegoing and Ama because, through the chronotropic lens, themes such as resistance and healing can be deduced. The French Marxist philosopher, Henri Lefebvre’s book The Production of Space, has helped to explore the concept of space. He became the first scholar to introduce the concept of space as an analytical category giving space an active role in subjects. Lefebvre views spaces not as mere containers in which activities of humans take place but in itself, space is actively involved in human interactions and activities. Lefebvre further views space as a social construct and process which is constantly altered by its users (39). His concept of space, therefore, provides a way of analysing the link between physical space and how humans interact in them. Lefebvre puts space in three subcategories- “spatial practice, representation of space and representational spaces.” He endeavours to incorporate “physical, mental and social or lived space into a unitary theory of space” (21). Regarding spatial practice, Lefebvre sees it as the physical/perceived space of social activity. This can be perceived through the day-to-day practice of buying, playing in places like markets or park. Due to their material and physical nature, Lefebvre refers to spatial practice as “spaces-in themselves” (38-9). The representation of space is how space is conceived by those who work with them. This consists of the maps, designs, drawings, plans by architects, engineers, bankers, urbanists and scientists (38-9). The last of the Spatial Triad is the representational space 16 which becomes the “lived space” (33). It represents the combination of both space as perceived and conceived. This is how imagination seeks to alter or appropriate a given space. This element of the spatial triad is often associated with “cultural memories, images, symbols imbued with the cultural meaning.” It also presents the “emotional and artistic interpretation of …. space by poets, writers, painters and other artists5” (39; 3). Through this aspect, heterogeneous relations/ideologies are shared or revealed. From the expositions of the two frameworks provided, it is quite evident that Bakhtin’s and Lefebvre’s theories provide an effective framework within which to situate the argument of the present study. 1.10 Methodology The study uses the qualitative research design. Through thematic and character analysis, the research examines how certain monuments such as castles, ships and plantations reveal themes of resistance and healing. Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope is used to refer to these monuments to examine the inseparability of time and space. This enables the researcher to focus on characters’ actions and some events as they happen and are altered. Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the Spatial Triad which includes: “spatial practices, representations of space and representational spaces” enables the researcher to identify how some physical spaces are perceived, conceived and lived by architects, historians, authors and characters. Specific characters such as Effia, Esi, Ness, Marcus and Marjorie in Homegoing and characters such as Ama, Esi, and Tomba in Ama are considered as the spatial actors who through their actions in the physical spaces, themes of resistance and healing are deduced. 5 Lefebvre, 39; Leary-Owhin, Michael, “A Fresh Look at Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad and Differential Space: A Central Place in Planning Theory?” 3. 17 1.11 Structure of the Project Structurally, the research is organized into five chapters. Chapter one includes: background of the study, statement of the problem, significance/ justification of the study, research objectives, research questions, explanation of neo-slave narratives, synopses of the select set of texts, the theoretical framework and methodology. Chapter two covers the literature review. Chapter three and four present the analysis of the selected texts. The final chapter covers the findings, conclusion and recommendations for further studies. 18 CHAPTER TWO 2.0 Introduction This chapter reviews the literature on slavery in Africa and the Atlantic slave trade. There is also a review on the various forms of violence that are meted to the enslaved Africans and the various resistance strategies that they use to obtain their freedom. The chapter again reviews both historical and literary works on slave castles, slave ships, and the slave plantations. The chapter further examines the literature on the selected texts: Herbstein’s Ama and Gyasi’s Homegoing. These reviews will not only expose the lacuna in this research area, but, also, in the scholarship regarding the select set of primary texts. The result of the chapter, therefore, is that it provides the opportunity to situate the present study within the context of the past and contemporary scholarship on slavery while enabling the researcher to highlight the gaps in the field which the present study attempts to contribute towards filling. 2.1 Sources of Slavery from Medieval Times to the Transatlantic Slave Trade According to Orlando Patterson, “there is nothing peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized” (vii). There was the existence of slavery almost everywhere from the ancient Greece and Rome to medieval Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. Africa has been closely connected with history as a major provider of slaves for “ancient civilization, the Islamic world, India and the Americans” (Paul Lovejoy 1). In his book Slavery in Time and Space, Jack Goody also notes that slavery is known from 2300 B.C where reference is linked to the capturing of foreigners as slaves in Mesopotamia (16). Their earliest legal documents were not “only concerned with land, houses and animals but also humans (slaves)” (cited in Goody 18). According to Lovejoy, the slavery expanded into the twentieth century in 19 Africa than in the Americans (1). In ancient times, some Africans offered themselves voluntarily to serve powerful people in communities. The category associated with this form of servitude was “pawns of debts.” The people thus categorized were people who gave themselves up as servants because of debt incurred by a family member or themselves (Joseph Anene 94), or to prevent starvation (Lovejoy 4). Samuel Johnson suggests that this system was common in Yoruba and was known as the Iwofa system6. Others were captured from other groups during the wars. A Jesuit priest of the sixteenth century also notes that some Africans were taken because of criminal offenses which included being proved a “witch”, murdering someone, “being intimate with a king’s wife [or] inciting war against kings…” (Lovejoy 39). These suggest that slavery in Africa became a sort of punishments to offenders in order to ensure political decorum among certain states. As most societies developed, slaves were needed for the continuous labour involved in agriculture. In some part of North Africa and Sudan states, where communities have become Islamized, slavery became the basis for the economic and social system. The Koran expressly permitted “the faithful to possess slaves” (John Wright 4; Anene 95) so all works or performances were left to slave labour. Arabs were the first modern societies to demand large numbers of slaves. Their slave trade began in the seventh century and ended in the twentieth century. This deportation of Africans to the Islamic lands was structured around two main routes; “the maritime traffic between the coast of East Africa and those of Middle East” on one hand and “the Trans Saharan caravan traffic” on the other hand (David Gakunzi 40). The Islamic caliphal empire which conquered the three old continents drew slaves from beyond the boundaries of Islam where Jihad 6 The Iwofa system granted slaves as free men. Their social statuses, civil and political rights remain intact. An Iwofa was only a subject to his master in the same universal sense that a borrower is a servant to the lender. 20 (holy war) was legally waged against heathens rather than Christians or Jewish. Slaves were in surplus to be exported through the Red Sea, down the Nile valley or across the Sahara. The main demand of the slavers was women and girls to be taken as concubines, entertainers, servants or for sexual pleasure (Wright 4). Males were often castrated or became eunuchs and were acquired as reliable “harem keepers, courtiers, and guards of palaces” (Anene 95; Lovejoy 5; Jerome Dowd 6). The more land a Muslim aristocrat possessed, the more slaves he required to cultivate it. (95). Lovejoy cites a similar reason for slave keeping in the Kongo Kingdom in the sixteenth century: “only slaves labour and serve. Men who are powerful have a great number of slaves whom they have captured in war or whom they have purchased. They [even] conduct business through these slaves by sending them to markets where they buy and sell according to the master’s orders” (40). Individual slaves were not solely into agricultural but helped their masters in the slave trade. There is also evidence that African slaves were acquired in ancient Egypt for domestic purposes and the construction of pyramids. Anene states that the first Africans to have been sold into slavery must have been the Nubians who lived in the southern part of Egypt and were sold to Europe and in the Middle East. East Africa was another source of the early slave trade. Asia was where the majority of slaves from East Africa found their way. According to Lovejoy, East Africa exported about 100,000 enslaved Africans in the 17th century; 400,000 during the 18th century and 1,618,000 in the 19th century. Anene notes that Arabs, Persians and Indians who found their way to the coast were engaged in the slave trade. The demand for slaves increased as a result of the creation of massive plantation which produced agricultural products such as garlic, sugar, oil, coconuts, grain and copra for both global and domestic consumption (Matthew Hopper 6). Abdul Sheriff contends that the British imperial agents considered Arabia as “a convenient bottomless pit that allegedly 21 consumed any number of slaves that lively imagination cared to conjure up” (55). Arabs simply demanded slaves not only for economic purposes but because they dislike hard work and since a part of their religion condone slavery, it created room for its practice (Hopper 6). Slave revolts dominated on this coast. Anene further notes that the ruler of Bagdad7 initiated the policy of including Zang slaves in his army. The slaves realizing their number was increasing in the army chose a leader called lord of the blacks and revolted. Europeans’ arrival in the fifteenth century to the West Coast of Africa brought a new phase in the African slave trade. Though slavery had existed in Africa, the European’s racially defined slavery changed the Africans’ perspective on slavery. The Portuguese being the first to arrive on this coast were encouraged and hopeful of finding a land of gold. Their key points of connection with West Africa were the Cape Verde Islands and the neighbouring mainland lying along the coast between Senegal and Sierra Leone. The medieval kingdoms of West Africa gained great wealth not only from the export of gold but slaves. The old capital of Ghana, Kumbi, had slave markets. The Asante states founded in the late seventeenth century existed as an independent polity that used mostly military force to conquer its neighbouring territories. In 1701, the Asantes captured Denkyira state, and this was followed by other warfares. The capturing of people as prisoners of war was of value to this military domination. While others became domestic slaves, others were sold to the Europeans. Members of the royal family such as Nana Gyaman of Techiman of the royal family and some Africans who were believed to have been Muslims were captured because they were deemed valuable due to their literacy (Sandra Greene 16-17). The 7 This city was created in 762 as the capital of the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, and it was the most important cultural hub of Arab and Islamic civilisation for the next 500 years, as well as one of the world's biggest towns. It was seized by the Mongol leader Hülegü in 1258, and its significance decreased after that. (See Bahry, Louay and Marr, Phebe A.) 22 Portuguese, for instance, learnt how lucrative it was to capture and sell slaves to work in the New World of European plantations in order to get large scale production of sugar, rice, cotton, coffee and tobacco. They brought European products such as mirror, gun, knives, hatchets, and beads in exchange for gold and slaves. In the middle of the fifteenth century, several forts and castles were constructed in Ghana, then Gold Coast to enhance slave trade activities. Slaves were kept in the dungeons before being transported to the New World. The slave trade scholar, Philip Curtin, in his book The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census estimates that close to about 10 million Africans were transported as slaves to work in the New World (86). 2.2 Historical Sources on Slave Forts, Ships and Plantations 2.2.1 Slave Castles The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century, they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world has ever seen. (Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Construction 727) The massive transfer of slaves, flora and fauna, minerals taken from Africa to America and Europe- which W.E. B Du Bois refers to as “the most magnificent drama” in our history relied primarily on castles built by slavers in Africa and seas and ships while travelling via the triangular routes to the New World. According to John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu, castles and forts, for instance, were designed to shield and unite strategic positions and exploitative interests of Europeans globally hence, this competition overseas became a form of a “European imperial feature” (7). The Portuguese, who were the first slave traders to settle on the Africa Coast built many forts there (Osei-Tutu and Victoria Ellen Smith 2). Their castle project started from 1400s to 1800s. These 23 edifices became vital in promoting political, commercial, social relationships and alliances among all people involved in the trade. The Portuguese’s first fort, Fort Anguin, was built on Mauritania’s Anguin Island in 1445. Other forts on the West African Coast include Sao Jorge da Mina, now called Elmina Castle, and Sao Paolo de Luango in 1572 on the Angola Coast in Southern Africa (Osei-Tutu 8). Since forts became a necessity for better trade in Africa, between £10,000 and £13,000 was dedicated by the British Parliament amid 1730s to 1760s to support the trading system in the castles. While Arnold Walter Lawrence estimates that forty (40) forts were built in Africa with Ghana carrying the majority of thirty-two (32), Rebecca Shumway estimates a total number of “four hundred English forts (400) especially at Cape Coast and Accra, and hundred (100) to two hundred (200) Danish forts at Accra” (85). The Elmina Castle being the oldest in Ghana became a “blueprint” for many European traders that wanted to build more castles/trading posts along the West Africa coast (Newiff Malyn 9). While the Portuguese almost secured the Gold Coast for a century, the Dutch seized Elmina from them in 1637 and drove them permanently from the coast in 1642. In 1637, there was a conversion of the Portuguese church in the castle as a slave auction market by the Dutch. The ownership of the forts alternated between the Dutch and the British African Company from 1750. The British finally took complete control of all coastal forts of Dutch and Elmina Castle by the end of the nineteenth century8. This made them the dominant European group in Gold Coast. Shumway further adds that the Cape Coast Castle and the Elmina Castle in the eighteenth century became the headquarters of the British and Dutch slave traders and most importantly, the places where Africans who had been purchased in other countries, especially Senegambia and Benin were 8 See Zook, George Frederick “Early Dutch and English Trade to West Africa” pp.137 and Bruner, “Culture on Tour pp.106 and Holsey, Bayo. Routes of Remembrance. Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana 30. 24 brought on ships for sale to other slavers (86). Despite the varied quantitative descriptions given by various scholars, Ghana remains the only West Africa country that had the largest number of slave castles. Osei-Tutu and Smith observe that though the fortresses had varied structures, some features were general to most, if not all edifices. They included “curtain walls”, “massive battlements” “watchtowers; central courtyards; … gun slits moats”, and “cannons” … (4) These features suggest that the Europeans strategically positioned and built these edifices to enhance their political and commercial activities. As suggested by Opoku-Agyemang, the cannons also depict the various resistance strategies that the slavers adopted to protect their territories and also the active roles that some Africans played in saving some of the people who were trapped in the dungeons. Stephanie Smallwood9 gives a vivid view of one of the castles, the Cape Coast on the shores of West Africa, Ghana, and what it stands for: Viewed from the water, Cape Coast Castle was an especially imposing sight. Rising abruptly above the shoreline, the fortress was rendered “almost inaccessible” by the large rocks that guarded its perimeter. Coming ashore at the landing-place just past the eastern end of the castle, captives entered through the nearby side gate, before being led to the prison where “slaves-in-irons” were housed until ships arrived to carry them away…. “Cut into the rock, beneath the parade ground” that formed part of the castle’s large, open courtyard, the facility “consist[ed] of large vaulted cellars, divided into several apartments which [could] easily hold a thousand slaves.” …. “The keeping of the slaves thus under ground is a good security to the garrison against any insurrection.” Once inside this dungeonlike space, slaves could hear the loud violent surf that crashed against the rocks on the other side of the prison walls. (Smallwood 38-39) 9 Smallwood, Stephanie. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. 25 Smallwood’s proposition of the Cape Coast Castle as “an imposing sight” seems to suggest that the building of the architects was rather forced on the African shores to help Europeans succeed in their trades. Africans who had been enslaved were housed in the same ground floor rooms that were used to store trade goods in the Coastal forts. As the demand for Africans increased, the European traders were convinced that there could be attempts of escape or threats from Africans or other traders so they built what Smallwood describes as “dungeonlike underground prison” (39) within the castles that housed the slaves. “A burden of irons” was put around the limbs of the enslaved and shackles were also needed to “physically disable captives during their incarceration in the Coastal forts” (40). The Europeans judging from how the enslaved were led into these spaces in chains only suggest that the structures were simply impermeable, and it was very difficult for enslaved to attempt an escape from these enclosed spaces. Although Smallwood is right about the existence of Cape Coast Castle, her claim that all Africans were transported to the castles through boats is not accurate. Most Africans were marched from very long distances on foot from far places. Consequently, the journey of the slaves towards the castles is much more painful than how Smallwood envisages it. Another inaccurate impression Smallwood creates is in reference to “the nearby side gate” to the “eastern end of the castle.” The gate in question seems not be the entry of for the captives but rather a gate of departure of captives before the Middle Passage begins. This explains why the gate is referred to as “The Door of No Return.” The actual gate through which slaves entered the castle is at the western side of the castle and ironically opposite to where the Anglican and Methodist Churches are situated. Osei-Tutu and Smith further expand on the importance of these edifices in the modern world by stating that the structures became physical anchors that gave solid grounds for “the human actions and processes that entangled the histories of Africa, Europe, and Americans, and 26 led to the emergence of an Atlantic world based on networks trade, culture, and politics.” As “nodal points” that shaped “physical landscapes and social spaces,” they become relevant in historical, socio-political and economic encounters both locally and globally (10). It can be deduced that any study that seeks to analyse the forts and castles as spaces where social, political, historical, and cultural themes emerge and are reexamined are worthy since it bears some significance in both the past and the present. Osei-Tutu and Smith go on to further suggest that since UNESCO has named some of these castles as world heritage sites and as National heritage, it “validates their place among humankind’s collective history” (10). The interrogations on how descendants of Africa and descendants of slave traders in Europe connect to these physical relics through literature still need to be examined extensively so that their roles within the “first modern transcontinental and transnational intersections of African and European histories” will be fully expressed (11). This, therefore, authenticates the analysis of themes of resistance and healing in the slave castles in Homegoing and Ama. 2.2.2 Slave Ship In The Social Life of Things, Arjun Appadurai10 states that “even though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view, it is the things-in-motions that illuminate their human and social context” (5). The significance of this assertion is that the “things-in-motion” can be applied to the slave ship because it forms part of primary components of material culture that made voyages from Africa to the Atlantic possible. After the enslaved Africans had been kept in the castle for days, there were some methods that the slave traders adopted before sending the slaves into the ships for them to be transported to the New 10 See his introductory essay to his 1988 edited collection. 27 World. Slave trade historian for North America and the Atlantic world, Ira Berlin, presents the harsh treatments the enslaved Africans received before boarding the slave ships to work on European plantations: Fear was omnipresent as the Africans, stripped naked and bereft of their every belonging, boarded the ships and met—often for the first time—white men. Brandishing red hot irons to mark their captives in the most personal way, these ‘white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair’ left more than a physical scar. Many enslaved Africans concluded the slavers were in league with the devil, if not themselves devils. For others, the searing of their skin confirmed that they were bound for the slaughterhouse to be eaten by the cannibals who had stamped them in much the way animals were marked 11. To justify their reasons for enslaving Africans, the slave traders and the plantation owners convinced themselves that Africans were an inferior race even by referring to them as slaves and by stripping off their social and cultural identity since they were branded with irons for the slave owners’ identification. Martin Munro in The Haunted Tropics: Caribbean Ghost Stories asserts: “To be a slave was to be a kind of ghost, living a half-life in a foreign land, an existence that denied the African’s humanity, making the slave a kind of non-being, a shadow of history” (vii). The Atlantic slave trade evolved into a commerce that stripped Africans of their freedom. The slave ship is seen as “the material setting and a stage for the enactment of the high human drama of the slave trade” (qtd. in Rediker 47). This suggests that the slave ship is seen as both a physical space and stage where tragic or profound series of slave trade events unfolded. Rediker traces the origins of the “world-changing maritime machines” from the late fifteen century when the Portuguese started their voyages to the West African Coast to navigate, explore, and 11 “The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” 28 master the high seas to trade in gold, ivory, and human beings, and to also fight and seize new lands. During the initial trade, merchants used whatever ship that was available for their voyages to Africa as long as a voyage at a specific time was worthy. The first Englishman believed to have made slave voyages was John Hawkins in 1562. Hawkins sailed to the coast of West Africa with three vessels that could convey loads of “120, 100, and 40 tons”12. His vessels, Ages, and Jesus of Lubeck were not precisely designed for the trade but made successful voyages to the coast to trade in humans. Many slave ships were specifically designed for the slave trade as technology advanced. Almost 12.4 million souls were sent onto the slave ships to be delivered to many European traders that owned plantations from the late fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century (6). He also notes that though the slave ship contributed to shaping today’s world, its history in many ways remains unknown (4). However, historians and archaeologists have succeeded in bringing some names of ships and events that happened during the voyage. According to Jessica Glickman, some features were common to most slave ships to ensure their successful journey to West Africa. There were barricades that kept the crew safe from the human cargo; to keep the vessels safe from being captured or seize, and to also curb the slaves from jumping overboard. There were also swivel guns and rifles, hatch-overs, lattices that were used to ensure the security and safety of the crew. There were bulkheads created to separate men, women, and children to avoid sexual intercourse among slaves and to prevent any violent uprising (24). Nicholas Radburn also observes that merchants selected vessels of varied dimensions and constructions to suit a particular geographical location and market conditions of “individual African slave ports.” Large vessels measuring between 2000 to 2,400 square feet were sent “deep 12 Junius P. Rodriguez, “Shipbuilding” The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery” 583. 29 water South of the windward” coast because the enslaved Africans could be easily acquired there. The largest slave ship in Liverpool registers, Duke of Clarence, for example, made two voyages to Bonny in the early 1880s. Smaller vessels between 1,600 to 1,750 square feet of which Bud was an example, were dispatched to the “shallow-water ports” in Upper Guinea and Senegambia because the supply of enslaved Africans was slow (119). The enslaved Africans were “shackled at the neck along a chain of six-by-six slaves, or two-by-two, fettered at the ankle” throughout the voyage. One of the slave ships that embarked on successful voyages to Africa was Brooks. This was a ship specifically designed by Joseph Brooks, a Liverpool merchant, for the slave trade in 1781. The Brooks was about “100 feet long, 27 feet wide, and was of 320 tons.” Its height between the decks where the Africans enslaved were kept was “5ft 8 inches” (Jane Webster13, 246). Brooks made four successful voyages from Liverpool to Gold Coast and Jamaica from 1781 to 1786. Brooks became one of the maritime machines that was measured by the parliamentary during an enquiry into British Slave Trade. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade published their well-known diagram of the slave Brooks, which was misspelt by the abolitionists as Brookes, in 1788 after compiling the findings of Lieutenant Parry of the Royal Navy who travelled to Liverpool to survey nine ships of which Brooks was part. This image was used to portray the slave ship “with its real dimension” to convey “the sufferings of the Africans in the Middle Passage.” The scale model of Brooks included 470 Africans- arranged in rows and columns. The abolitionists further partitioned the ship into varied sections for men, women, and children lying on top of others to give shape to the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade. Thomas 13 “Looking for The Material Culture of the Middle Passage”. 30 Clarkson in History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade observes that even “the print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horrors upon all who saw it and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given, in serving the cause of the injured Africans” (111). According to Radburn, the abolitionists also realized the ship Brooks which was designed to carry only 470 slaves on each voyage as stated in the laws in the Dolban Act or Slave Trade Act of 1788 never carried such a number but carried more than it required even before Parry surveyed its dimensions. For instance, in 1784, Brooks carried 609 Africans; 612 Africans in 1782, and in 1785, 740 Africans (117). Another ship named Vigilante was introduced with images of shackles that revealed the shackling of slaves from ankle to ankle and wrist to wrist. The image is believed to have been taken by Lt. Mildway in the River Bonny on the coast of Africa on 15th April 1822. She was 240 tons and had 345 captives on board. According to Alonso de Sandoval, a Spanish Jesuit Priest, in 1627, Portuguese traders “locked” the enslaved Africans “in the hold of their slave ships where they were closed off from the outside so that they could not neither see the moon nor the sun” (qtd. in Radburn 127). The shackles attached to the images of the slave ship suggest the harsh treatment slaves received before they got to the New World. Abolitionists used this image together with the images of Brooks to campaign against the slave trade. Rediker adds that the slave ship became a place “where sickness, diseases, and high mortality were a lot for both sailor and slave” (325). The captives did not receive any better treatment so some slave traders decided to adopt some strategies that could help reduce the mortality rate. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch slave traders, for instance, began to increase the scanty allowance of their usual rice and beans to the slaves so that the mortality rate can be reduced. Thomas Phillips, a captain of the slave ship Hannibal, in 1693 noted that during 31 the day, the males fed themselves on the “main deck and forecastle”; the females “on the quarter deck” and the children “upon the poop” (Radburn 128). After this process, the captives will be brutally sent back into their assigned positions in the holds. Also, slave traders decided to allow the captives to have a short time on the decks usually in the mornings before taking them back into the holds. Some of these methods helped keep slaves for a longer period, but they did not stop the outbreak of diseases because of the lack of proper sanitation in the holds. Some sailors, therefore, adopted cruel strategies to save some slaves to have their insurance covered. Such violence happened on one of the slave ships named Zong in 1781 while it had loaded slaves from West Africa to Jamaica. The human cargo of Zong was tightly packed with 470 slaves. There was an outbreak of a disease leading to the death of sixty (60) Africans and 7 members of the crew. Fearful of further misfortunes, the captain of the Zong, Luke Collingwood, suggested to the rest of the crew: “if the slaves died a natural death, it would be the loss of the owners of the ship, but if they were thrown alive into the sea, it would be the loss of underwriter who had insured the voyage.” Some members of the crew, like James Kelsal, protested to this act but Collingwood insisted on his decision. That evening, 54 slaves with “hands bound” were thrown overboard. In the next two days, 42 and later 26. Ten (10) of the slaves while watching this hideous outright murder, rather opted for suicide by jumping overboard. Collingwood pretended later that it was lack of water that caused his actions though the ship had 420 gallons. When the insurer refused to pay, the owners took the case to court. This trial, according to Rediker, revealed the cruelty of the trade and proved to be the turning point for the abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano and Granule Sharp (223). While onboard, the women had more freedom than the men because their gender status rendered them docile. They were sometimes left unshackled. Some sailors also had sexual intercourse with the black women without their consent. The other enslaved women who consented 32 were trying to make the best out of the worst situations. Pious John Newton14, who was simply described as odd among his fellow mariners for sensibilities, spent most of his time writing letters to his future wife. Newton wrote in his diary “William Cooney seduced a woman slave down into his room and lay with her brutelike in view of the whole quarter-deck.” He continued: “if anything happens to the woman I shall impute it to him, for she was big with child. Her number is 83” (75). Thus was a horrific experience of a pregnant woman whose name had been reduced to a number. On the Ship Ruby, the captain often called newly purchased slave women to choose one for his use. In Sons of Neptune and the Sons of Ham, Emma Christopher recounts a disturbing incident aboard the ship Ruby where the captain selected a young slave as his mistress. The captain subjected her to relentless lashings and brutal beatings, resulting in her tragic death three days later, despite having been his mistress for several months (162). Other enslaved black women with children were often maltreated by the slave crew. For instance, a woman on board Liberty died in childbirth but her surviving child was fed on flour, so the child died two days later. A woman on board the Hudibras had an abortion after several beatings. Another lost her nine-month-old baby after it has been flogged and burnt to death. The enslaved woman also received her beatings for refusing to throw the body of her child into the sea. Onboard Neptune, a boatswain also asked for permission to discard a six-week-old baby overboard because it was troubling him with its cries (161-162). Some crew members endured various forms of hardship. One captain in 1721 referred to his sick sailors as “walking ghosts” because the conditions on board did not favour them. Rediker also points out that one captain, David Harrison, carried news to Providence, Rhode Island in 1770 14 Newton, John. The Journal of a Slave Trader 75. 33 from the River Gambia that an entire crew of the vessel, Elizabeth, had died, leaving “a ghost ship anchor” (224). Other crew members died due to diseases outbreak. Rediker cites instances such as loss of toes and feet due to high scurvy, amputation of legs due to ulcers. Some members also committed suicide due to harsh treatment from some of the captains of the ship. Other crew members died as a result of falls from the main decks into holds while others drowned when their ships capsized (225). The perils associated with the journey to the New World through the slave ships made Europeans involved in the trade as sailors, captains, and surgeons refer to these machines “as slaughter-houses”, “coffins” or “floating tombs”15 that simply buried enslaved Africans alive. As a setting that housed people of different cultures who were treated differently depending on their race, slave ships are one of the many historical items most authors of neo-slave narratives feature in their contemporary literary works. Therefore, similar to slave castles, slave ships carry some significance in evaluating social, political, historical, and cultural themes in today’s world. Therefore, to investigate how Gyasi and Herbstein foreground slave themes of resistance and healing through the use of the slave ship to address contemporary needs in Homegoing and Ama respectively, endorses the essence of the present study. 2.2.3 Plantations According to Rediker, the vitality of the slave ship corresponded with that of the other foundational institution of slavery, the plantation. While the slave ship became a factory that produced slaves, the plantation became a factory that consumed and produced the slave ship itself (Marie Britt Rusert, 10)16. The more slave owners constantly demanded many workers, the more 15 Miller, Joseph. Ways of Death 314; Rediker, The Slave Ship 274 and Smallwood, Saltwater 137. 16 Shackles in the Garden: Ecology and Race in American Plantation Cultures 34 slave traders travel to get more slaves. The plantation formed a major economic institution which began in the medieval Mediterranean, expanded to the Eastern Islands, and became prominent in the New World, including Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America in the seventeenth century. The expansion of sugar plantations in 1650s triggered an insatiable demand for labour (Rediker, 48). Sugar cultivation required huge capital investments, a stable labour supply, and a large scale of lands. Coffee and cotton plantation grew much later. In Essays on Slavery, Jacky Charles states that the Portuguese and the Spanish attempted to use the enslaved native Americans of whom some were prisoners or convicts or European indentured servants, but they were unreliable due to high mortality rate as a result of malaria, measles, and smallpox (6). Charles supports this claim by noting the outbreak of smallpox in the 1560s that killed about 30,000 Native Americans on the plantations and villages in Brazil. Also, in African Slavery and Latin American and Caribbean, Herbert Klien asserts that governments of both Portugal and Spain decided on avoiding the use of Native Americans as slaves due to their religious, political, and cultural reasons (22) so they needed to rely on some form of coerced or cheap labour for the plantations. For Pius Onyemedi in The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans, he notes that the reasons for choosing Africans as slaves for the sugar plantations mainly stemmed from how most Europeans considered the blacks as servants and were simply created to work on these plantations (205 African slave labour, therefore, became the most economical and consistently dependable workforce as sugar cultivation expanded in the latter part of the sixteenth century (Charles 7). For the next two centuries, various ships brought in human cargo with a vast number of enslaved Africans who were purchased by the planters. The enslaved were forced to work, under close and forceful command to harvest products for the world market (48). In the 1690s, gold was 35 also discovered in Mines Gerais in Brazil so 1.7 million people were brought from Africa to work too17. Barbados became English’s “first American colony” to develop sugar plantations mostly dependent on African slave labour (Jerome S. Handler 183). As the number of plantations increased, there was high demand for slaves. Between 1750 and 1780, about 16,000 to 17,000 Africans were imported yearly into Brazil, 18,000 per year in the 1780s; 23,000 a year in 1790s; 24,000 per annum in the first decade of the 19th century, and 15,000 in Puerto Rico in the later part of the 19th century (Charles 10). In Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson, Joshua Rothman affirms that the enslaved in the cotton plantation in Mississippi were described as “fuels consumed to make that development possible” (10). Africans were in high demand as well because, without them, there was no way the Americans could meet the economic demands of the large markets. According to Britt, the plantation is not static, monolithic site: it is a bounded system of dynamic relations (10) since various individuals with different cultural background worked on these fields. The white slave plantation owners sent members of different cultures to a specific plantation. This was due to fear of possible rebellion if communication were allowed among slaves from the same region. As Richard Dunn notes that the story of sugar was not just about sweetness, the harsh treatments that were given to the slaves must be emphasized. Rusert puts it that the plantation “metamorphosized from an idyllic geography of botanical bounty and pure soil to a toxic paradise; a tainted space that restricted a lot of individuals” (17). Slaves had to plant, care for, and harvest the crops as well as extract the liquid from the sugar cane before boiling and processing to turn the 17 Arsenault, Natalie & Christopher, Rose. “African Enslaved a Curriculum Unit on Comparative Slavery System” 15 36 final products to sugar and the waste products to rum (“Enslaved People’s Work on Sugar Plantation”). The use of various forms of violence on the enslaved to get work done on the plantation allowed the cementation of Africans as objects rather than subjects. Masters of slave plantations used the whip to reinforce their dominion over the enslaved. William Dusinberre affirms this when he states: “Whipping was like defecating: it happened regularly but one did not talk about it”18. An supervisor at a distant quarter might simply be said to have whipped a man for not working. Any action on the plantation that proves a certain act of “villainous laziness” by any enslaved was bound for some lashes in a public display for his or her failure to comply with his or her master’s will19. Archaeologist and historian John Otto gives evidence of such physical violence of slaves when he states that slaves were punished with “a short whip with a heavy handle and a plaited, tapering thong.” for refusing to work, stealing, or running away into a wood. (Cited in Paul Farnsworth, 148.) The whipping often resulted in “historic injuries, including torn skin blisters, bruises, blood loss, and permanent scars.”20 Todd Savitt describes the whipping as creating welts on the exposed back or buttocks, resulting in unimaginable agony, particularly as each lash delves deeper into pre-existing wounds.21. In Brutality or Benevolence in Plantation Archaeology, Paul Farnsworth lists some plantations that were known for the poor treatment of the enslaved: Great Hope Plantation presented the worst instance of cruelty to an enslaved individual in the colony’s history occurred; the owners of Marine Farm Plantation and Promised Land Plantation were both charged with ignoring their “apprentices” during the transition from slavery to freedom (146). Some slaves were 18 Dusinberre, William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps 126. 19 Isaac, Rhys. Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation 213. 20 Dickman, Michael. Honor, Control, and Powerlessness: Plantation Whipping in the Antebellum 11. 21 Cited in Dickman 11. 37 also amputated, hanged, or beheaded for attempting an escape (146). James Michie gives some historical evidence on how some physical violence on some slave plantations such as the Richmond Hill. These included “being sold, imprisoned, beaten…, put to death or being hanged or being tied to horses and pulled apart for attempting to escape” (148-149). Frederick Douglass, in his autobiographical narrative22, expresses his feelings of shame as a result of the whippings his master, Mr. Covey, gives him while he is a slave on his plantation: “Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me- in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died out; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me, and behold a man transformed to a brute!” (152). Through his pain, Douglass feels like a man who has been dishonoured because his punishment denied him of the true sense of humanity. He spent the majority of the time in the woods, trying to hide from his master’s physical torture: “I must stay here and starve; or go home to Covey’s and have my flesh torn to pieces and my spirit humbled under his cruel lash. These were the alternatives before me” (165). Michael Dickman suggests that the whipping inflicted on all the enslaved Africans created physical and emotional scars that at some point rendered the victims hopeless. However, as Douglas fights back with his master, Mr. Covey, there was no longer a master-servant relationship or inferiority versus superiority because both men began to see themselves as equals before the law, and “the very colo[u]r of the man was forgotten” (67). Douglas himself admits that Covey never whipped him again (176-177). To commemorate the memory of slavery in contemporary times, some agencies have renovated various slave plantations as museums. An example of such is the Whitney Plantation 22 Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: Written by Himself. 38 which is located in Wallace Louisiana on the Riverbanks in Mississippi. The Whitney Plantation, originally an indigo plantation in 1752, has been renovated to serve as a museum that focuses on the lives of those who worked there during slavery (107)23. Also, the 1811 Slave Revolt on Whitney Plantation where about 500 slaves rose and killed two white men has also been memorialised. The slaves who fought during this revolt were defeated after a battle against the local militia. Many slaves were beheaded and executed as punishments. Today, dozens of slaves who died during the revolts have been remembered through the creation of 63 ceramic heads on steel rods along the pond on the Whitney Plantation (Slavery and Remembrance). Farnsworth affirms: “to speak of resistance, without discussing violence, is to ignore a significant cause of that resistance and only give one side of the story” (154). The reality of resistance must be integral to any study that seeks to interpret the lives of the enslaved people and their descendants for where there was constant abuse and violence, rebellion, most times, arose. Therefore, just like the castles and slave ships, the account on the slave plantations and the events that authors describe in plantations support the vitality of the present study in revealing resistance and healing in Homegoing and Ama. 2.3 Forms of Resistance on the African Continent, Castles, Ships and Plantations When one is denied his or her freedom through any means, there is the possibility of the individual resisting such act. Resistance pertains to the diverse methods through which enslaved individuals challenged or opposed the various acts they deemed as forms of oppression by their slave masters. As Smallwood states: “Africans often tried their best to produce an African narrative of persistent and often lonely attempts among themselves to continue to function as subjective 23 Phulgence, Francis Wiston “Monument Building, Memory Making and remembering Slavery in Contemporary Atlantic World.” 39 beings- persons possessing independent will and agency” (Smallwood 122). According to Rediker, enslavement produced swift resistance particularly in cases involving raiding or kidnapping of slaves. (100). Throughout the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Africans constantly resisted slavery both as an institution and a condition that took away the liberty every human is entitled to. The various forms of resistance began on the African continent and continue on slave ships through to the slave plantations in the New World. Naana Opoku-Agyemang and Kali Block-Steele, for instance, have examined how the people of two villages in Ghana; Sankana and Gwollu in the Upper West Region, adopted a lot of resistance strategies to avoid raiders from capturing them. Block-Steele, for instance, examines the use of baked bricks instead of thatch to build roofs in Gwollu. This was done carefully to avoid the slavers from using smoke to bring them out of their rooms. Doors were also narrowly built in their homes to prevent a lot of raiders from entering a room at a time. In Sankana, the village is situated among “huge rock formations and caves.” These features offered some protection against raiders. There are also rocks called the Watch Towers where most guards were sent to watch day and night to alert the people of Sankana with a call of any person they saw as suspicious or raiders riding on the horsebacks24. These structures bear testimonies of resistance to slavery. In Forts, Castles, and Society, Osei-Tutu states that historical depictions of West African forts and castles in the context of the Transatlantic Slave Trade often emphasize their role as both symbols of extreme suffering and instruments of oppression. Osei-Tutu suggests further that there is the stark contrast between what he describes as “eerie, suffocating slave dungeons below and the open, airy whitewashed civilized white spaces above consisting of a residential area, school, 24 Opoku-Agyemang 22-28; Block-Steele 9-11. 40 churches, and facilities with good drinking water all gently buffeted by fresh sea breeze” (4). One cannot just imagine that the word freedom and humanity existed in these dark and dreadful sites. According to Edmund Abaka, the castles represent a Black Holocaust of unfathomable torment, misery, and death. They are also like ships at anchor permanently on the Euro-African frontier in West Africa (xvi-xxii). Notwithstanding the mighty walls of the forts and its horrors, resistance to the slave trade started on the shores of Africa even before slaves were transported. The enslaved Africans resisted slavery through escapes and the jobs assigned to them by the slave masters. In July 1682, during a shortage of corn, the sustenance provided for the enslaved, thirteen individuals out of fifty captives, as recounted by Mark Bedford Whiting, successfully escaped by undermining the prison (cited in Smallwood 41). Bedford again observes that jobs of such nature were given Arda slaves25 or castle slaves but at times when they were short in supply, the captives were made to do these tasks (Smallwood 41). Escapes, in general, were possible through the little opportunities given such as jobs, personal strength, luck, or success that pushed some captives to emancipate themselves or resist slavery throughout the Atlantic crossing. Jobs assigned to the slaves became forms of escape and resistive strategies slaves used. Some captives were taken out of the dungeons to engage in tasks such as woodcutting, mud clay for the construction of European settlements, and stone gathering (Lawrence 90). During their outside work, slaves try their best to run away from their supervisors and slavery in general. Also, once captors chained slaves to be transported in canoes to the ship at sea, some enslaved attempted their escape. In his introduction to The Slave Ship, Rediker gives an account of a story of a woman, who jumped out of the canoe and started to swim for a sandbar while being transported from the castle to the canoe to be sent to 25 Arda which was alternatively spelt as “Ardra” was “the English rendering of Allada, the Kingdom of Benin Region. Arda was the name given to the “castle resident slave labour force.” Most castle slaves came from this region, so the name was used to refer to all slaves who were tasked to work in the castles (See Smallwood 37). 41 the slave ship. Rediker’s account is based on the narration of William Butterworth, who was a sailor on board the ship, Hudibras in 1786. This evidence also suggests that the enslaved used various forms of resistive strategies to liberate themselves from slavery. Scholars such as Richard Price and Sidney Mintz in their 1976 essay, The Birth of America Culture explore strategies used by slave masters to prevent resistance among enslaved Africans before their Atlantic transport. Richard Price and Sydney Mintz on one hand argue that the deliberate mixing of captives while disrupting cultural ties, prevented solidarity and potential rebellions. Instance cited by John Thornton, Judith Carney and Gwendolyn Hall indicate strategic sourcing of slaves from one area based on expertise, aiming to minimize the likelihood of uprisings (Radburn 7). In her 2006 inaugural lecture Where There is no Silence, Naana Jane Opoku- Agyemang elaborates on the significance of the slave forts and castles in Ghana. Opoku- Agyemang suggests that the slave castles mark a physical point in the construction of a definition of African dia