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Ama:
A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
By Manu Herbstein Herbstein's historical "faction"
successfully blends extensive and meticulous research with
abundant imagination to transport the reader into the violent
world of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Ama is as much about the
violence of colonialism, patriarchy, female sexuality or
gendered reproduction, economic production and the site of
imperial contest, racial difference, as it is about resistance.
Ama's journey allows us to read the complexities and
contradictions of the time, where all classes, free and slave,
women and men, black, white and mulatto are in some way
interrelated in a dynamic that results from relations of
power.
Herbstein . . .
(re) claims and (re) surfaces a version of the past and this too
is an act of resistance, a struggle for the politicization of
memory that serves to illuminate and transform the present.
--Shereen
Essof, African Gender
Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa The Voice of
the Turtle, November, 2003.
Ama
is a sweeping story of Africans caught up in the Atlantic slave
trade. Crafted by Manu Herbstein, a native South African who has
been a long-time resident of Ghana, the book is more carefully
researched than some more widely acclaimed novels dealing with
Africans in the Diaspora.
--Christopher
R. DeCorse,
Syracuse University, International Journal of African Historical
Studies Volume 37 Number 1 (2004)
This book review chronicles the result of a
project on the Atlantic slave trade and reparations in a
semester-length History of Africa class for advanced
undergraduates.
Ama, who is the eponymous heroine acting
among historical characters and events, introduced 13 male and
17 female students from ethnically diverse backgrounds to
difficult issues raised in the project. All students agreed: Ama
riveted them to the mind and heart of a courageous female slave.
She became their sister, their universal family member - we are
all Africans; she touched them.
In class
discussions and summary/reaction journal entries, students came
away shocked and transformed. “Why was I not told about this
in public school?” was a refrain. So, by the project’s end
Ama had begun a new journey; she had convinced almost all
students that reparations is not about whether or not, but
rather in what inclusive form.
--Kenneth
Wilburn,
Department of History, East Carolina University "Teaching
About the Atlantic Slave Trade and Reparations." Review of Ama,
A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, by Manu Herbstein.
African Studies Review 46, No. 1 (April 2003): 190-191.
Ama is a story of
struggle, resistance and inner strength. Great attention is paid
to detail and the descriptions are atmospheric and sensual . .
.this is a notable debut which amply deserves its recognition,
in particular because of the deep research which underlies the
text.
--Rayda
Jacobs, Rapport
29/06/02 Rayda Jacobs’ published novels include The Slave Book
(Kwela, 1998)
In Ama: A
Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (2001), Manu Herbstein
sets himself the challenging task of fictionalizing the kind of
experiences Equiano spoke of from a personal viewpoint, and as I
turned the novel’s 456th page, it is one I felt he had met
fully.
--Tony
Simoes da Silva,
University of Exeter, African Review of Books
. . . the story is
very well told. As an historian involved in slavery as my
speciality, I could identify with so many things in the book. I
can see how he researched the historical accounts.
--Akosua
Perbi, Head of the
Department of History, University of Ghana. On the University of
Ghana’s Radio Univers, Read-A-Book-A-Week programme May 21 and
28, 2003.
I must say that no
one book has gone into such elaborate detail to recreate both
the process and the experience of slavery such has been done by
Manu (Herbstein.) This is why the book is worth careful study.
--Kwadzo
Senanu, former
Professor of English Literature, University of Ghana. On the
University of Ghana’s Radio Univers, Read-A-Book-A-Week
programme May 21 and 28, 2003.
A book written
with tremendous moral passion about a monstrous episode in human
history.
--The Right
Reverend Bishop Richard Holloway,
Chairperson for the pan-Commonwealth judging panel, author and
former Bishop of Edinburgh.
A monumental work,
epic in scope and design, and clearly the result of extensive
research, which has been skillfully woven into an enchanting
narrative. This panoramic story, with its vividly realized
characters and heroic action, restores the ancient link between
history and literature.
--Africa
Book Centre, London
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 renewed 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
Pierson, Elgin, IL
United States at www.amazon.com
Avec l‘histoire
d‘Ama, toute l‘expérience des Africains du XVIIIè siècle
(esclaves ou non) est ainsi personnifiée d‘une manière réaliste
est inoubliable. Ce roman explique également très bien les
causes et les origines de l‘esclavage, ainsi que les conséquences
du commerce triangulaire, qui furent désastreuses pour la
population africaine. Je n‘ai trouvé Ama qu‘en version
anglaise. Mais le style littéraire est relativement simple ;
des lycéens peuvent donc lire ce roman sans grande difficulté,
je pense. C‘est en effet un bon complément aux cours
d‘histoire.
--Kristel
Nana-Mvogo, Afrique
Echos
Manu Herbstein’s
first novel, Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, is a
meticulously researched historical novel that offers a vividly
rendered picture of the atrocities of the slave trade.
--Tamara
Wagner, Fellow,
National University of Singapore. African Postcolonial
Literature in English pages in the Postcolonial Web
An engrossing and
powerful story of a woman of courage, intelligence, and
strength, AMA is not for children, for the squeamish, or for
those who demand political correctness in their history. AMA's
author tries to depict the Atlantic slave trade as it was,
making no concession to modern revisionism; readers will look in
vain for stereotypes in AMA's pages. Herbstein does an admirable
job of bringing a strange, harsh world to life; AMA is a book
that deserves a much larger audience than it will probably get.
--India Edghill,
Historical Novels Review, May 2002
*
* *
Ama has been used in an
academic environment by Prof. Emmanuel Akyeampong at
Harvard in his course on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa
and the Americas.
Prof. Kenneth Wilburn at the
University of East Carolina in courses on Imperialism in Theory
and Practice and the History of Africa.
Prof. Heidi Gengenbach in her Boston
University CAS Writing Program Seminar in World Literature:
WR100 FD Stories of the Atlantic Slave Trade ("Key texts
include Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olauda Equiano, Fred D’Aquiar’s Feeding the
Ghosts, Manu Herbstein’s Ama: A Story of the Atlantic
Slave Trade, Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, and
Robert Hams’ The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of
the Slave Trade Course
Descriptions
Prof. Martin Klein, Professor
Emeritus, University of Toronto, Benedict Distinguished Visiting
Professor of History at Carleton College, will use Ama in
a Winter 2004-5 Research Seminar, HIST 395: Comparative Slavery
(“. . . will review some of the literature on slavery and the
slave trade and will center on two narratives . . . The second
is a novel that traces thehistory of a young girl from her
enslavement in northern Ghana to Brazil.”) Course
Syllabi
*
* *
How did I start writing Ama?
In 1994 gangs of young Konkomba men were
rampaging through Dagomba villages, killing and burning. No
one could explain their behaviour to me.
"Oh, the northerners, they are like that," I was told.
I felt ashamed of my own ignorance. In a library I found David
Tait's book The Konkomba of Northern Ghana. The
story it told suggested to me that the roots of the violence
might lie deeply embedded in past history. The
Konkomba were here first, living without kings or chiefs, ruled
by elders and priests.
The Dagomba, originally from Lake Chad, arrived
on their horses, conquered the natives and took their
land (that's really potted history for you.) Asante conquered
the Dagomba about 1773 and exacted an annual tribute of slaves.
Every year Dagomba warriors set out to hunt for Konkomba
to deliver to Kumase.
I asked myself what it must have been like to be a Konkomba
girl, so captured. I read everything relevant which I could lay
hands on in Accra, much of it published before 1970. As I
did so, I created Ama and she wrote the book for
me.
Ama is about the Black Atlantic but when I wrote
it I hadn't heard of Paul Gilroy or John Thornton and had only
read some earlier work of Paul Lovejoy's.
Ama is an important book (even if I say so
myself.) It tells a story which needs to be told and has
hardly ever been told before. It fills in some of the gaps upon
which historians are only permitted to speculate. Even if
it were badly written it should merit publication. (So much
rubbish rolls off the western presses every day.)
Yet no U.S. publisher would touch it. Only the
revolution in the publishing industry and the commitment and
dedication of my former agent, Richard Curtis, now my publisher
(www.e-reads.com)
has made it possible for the book to reach the audience which I
hope is waiting for it.
One potential publisher suggested
that Ama might be more marketable if Ama's
destination were Virginia rather than Brazil. I refused to
consider the change. Yet Ama is indeed about the
U.S.A.
Until the full story
of the Atlantic Slave Trade and its aftermath becomes firmly
embedded in the curriculum of American schools, until it becomes
part of the heritage and consciousness and conscience of all
citizens, not only those of African descent, until that time
black and white Americans will continue to find it difficult to
talk to one another.
--Manu
Herbstein
Post-script. In April 2002, Ama
received the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize.
Princess Anne handed the prize to him at Holyroodhouse Palace in
Edinburgh, Scotland. manner.
Source:
www.ama.africatoday.com/author.htm
* * * *
*
Manu Herbstein was
born
in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, 1936. Educated at the University
of Cape Town. Civil and structural engineer by profession.
His grandparents emigrated to South Africa in the 1890s. Two from
Russia, one a Litvak, her husband a Rumanian, whose name he
bears.
All Jewish. Manu's father was a lawyer who became a judge, "liberal"
in white South African terms, but devastated when he announced his
intention to marry a Ghanaian.
His wife, Akua, is Asante, an economist by training,
entrepreneur by profession. She runs a furniture factory
employing a hundred and has recently branched into real estate
(www.akuaba.com).
Her alma mater, the University of Ghana, awarded her an honorary
doctorate in 2000.
He left South Africa in 1959 and was in Lagos to see the Union Jack
lowered in October 1960 and came to Ghana first in1961. He was
in and out during the 60s, Bombay, Lusaka (where he
married) and Scotland; (but in Accra during the coup which
overthrew Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.) He has lived in Accra
since 1970 and went back to SA for the first time during de
Klerk's all-white referendum.
He and Akua have two sons, Kwame, a civil engineer, working in
Johannesburg; Kwamena, economist and computer science graduate.
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update 26 July 2008 |
