Consider the following quotes and their importance to various aspects of The Book of Negroes
“I wouldn’t wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her” (4).
“Not having to think about food, or shelter, or clothing is a rare thing indeed. What does a person do, when
survival is not an issue?” (6).
“Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them” (7).
“Beauty comes and goes. Strength, you keep forever” (19).
“I nearly made myself crazy, wondering how to escape my own nakedness. To where could a naked person run?” (31).
“Many times during that long journey, I was terrified beyond description, yet somehow my mind remained intact. Men and women the age of my parents lost their minds on that journey” (56).
“It struck me as unbelievable that the toubabu would go to all this trouble to make us work in their land. Building the toubabu’s ship, fighting the angry waters, loading all these people and goods onto the ship—just to make us work for them? Surely they could gather their own mangoes and pound their own millet. Surely that would be easier than all this!” (62).
“After two months at sea, the toubabu brought every one of us up on deck. Naked, we were made to wash. There were only two-thirds of us left. They grabbed those who could not walk and began to throw them overboard, one by one. I shut my eyes and plugged my ears, but could not block out all the shrieking” (93).
“Englishmen do love to bury one thing so completely in another that the two can only be separated by force:
peanuts in candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons” (103).
“Turn your mind from the ship, child. It is nothing but a rotting carcass in the grass. The carcass has shocked you with its stink and its flies. But you have walked past it, already, and now you must keep walking” (106)
