That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into this backstreet corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones (19).Just as the wind has always dictated Rosette, Anouk and Vianne's lives, I can feel it pushing and pulling me to the end of another chapter and the beginning of my career as a teacher. Thankfully, this wind of mine is not dashing me against stones. The concept of the changing seasons and winds having this kind of power is romantic and a little bit scary.
Zozie says you can ride the wind; that it's like a wild horse that can be tamed and trained to do just what you want it to. You can be a kite, a bird; you can grant wishes; you can find your heart's desire...(311-312).Blogger Valerie J found this book to be aimed at a teenage audience and did not enjoy how the chapters are written from the perspectives of the different characters. I disagree with Valerie on both of these counts. The story explores the adult themes of motherhood, the desire for security, lust, love and friendship.
You can ride the wind like an eagle, Nanou - or you can choose to let it blow you away (245).To hear from Joanne Harris about the writing of the book please visit her website here.
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But I was stolen by menKwabena Akurang-Parry, states that some African states were involved in the trading of African’s from other states in the Atlantic slave Trade (2010). However, in his critique of Henry Louis Gates, he stresses that it is important to not except the viewpoint that “Africans” enslaved “Africans” (Akurang-Parry, K 2010). Akurang-Parry discusses the deployment of “African”, observing that in African history there is a tendency to coalesce into obscurantist (conservative/traditionalist) constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of “all” Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history. It is through this history that Afro-Americans search for, or rebel against an African identity.
the colour of my own skin...
But I was traded by men
the colour of my own skin
traded like a fowl like a goat
like a sack of kernels I was
traded...
But I was traded by menAlliteration is also used in this stanza to again highlight that the speaker’s life was reduced to the value of a ‘trinket’. The ‘K’ sound is repeated throughout the stanza: "...traded ‘like’… ‘like’ a ‘sack’ of ‘kernels’… for ‘trinkets’". The line spacing in this stanza is also important in demonstrating the emotion the speaker feels for being traded for something as little as a ‘trinket’. The word ‘traded’ is placed on a line by itself not only to focus the readers to the act of trade that has occurred, but also to symbolise the trade, separating the objects to be traded from the objects they are traded for. The space between “like a fowl like a goat” emphasises the simile of the speaker to these animals. The spacing in the items the speaker was traded for is used to slow that part of the stanza down and draw attention to the simplicity of the items and the resentment that the speaker feels.
the colour of my own skin
traded like a fowl like a goat
like a sack of kernels I was
traded
for beads for pans
for trinkets?
What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. ... A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold is itself money, or sugar is the price of sugar. - Marx, Wage Labour and Capital (1847)Nicholls has used a lot of alliteration in this poem. I have already shown how the letter ‘k’ is repeated to demonstrate the undervaluing of the speaker’s life that happened through the slave trade. Throughout the entire poem there is alliteration of the letter ‘t’. The letter ‘t’ appears to be dictating the themes of the poem as being ‘stolen’ and ‘traded’ by men who are not human, who do not value life, hands ‘turned talons’, the undervaluing of life, being ‘traded’ for ‘trinkets’. The letter ‘t’ takes us down the ‘trail’, the path of the trade, or of the memory of the trade and walks us to the present. ‘It’, the stealing and trading, we cannot ‘forget’, what we refuse to acknowledge in history is still there, it still happened. Finally the ‘t’ brings the reader to the end of the journey as the speaker rinses the ‘taint of treachery’, the history of betrayal and the speaker’s racial heritage. The poem moves away from an Afro-diasporic identity, allowing the speaker to create their own individual identity, which is still dictated by the past.
