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 

 

 

 

 



 

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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



 

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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



 

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DEDICATION 

I dedicate this work to my lovely grandmother, my priceless mother and my late father. 

 

 

  



 

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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. 

 

 

 

 



 

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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 



 

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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. 



 

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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. 

  



 

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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. 



 

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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. 



 

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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