Discussion 22.11.13

The chapter, "They come and go from holy ground," was discussed today in class. This chapter is obviously extremely important in regards to Aminata's freedom. When she finally built up the courage to leave Lindo, I anticipated that something would go wrong. When the chapter ended, she has fled to Canvas Town and began a life here so I thought OK, things are going well. I do not believe that a black person, in the slavery days, was every truly free. They could be physically free (like Aminata in this chapter) but they were never mentally free. From the moment they thought about being free, they began to feel fear that if they were free, their owner or some white folk would find them and capture them again. Aminata, though, does believe that she is now free. We see this when she says, "Nearly twenty years had passed since I was seized in the woods outside Bayo, but here I was, all alone and surrounded by the trees of another continent-and I was free again."(Hill,287) I wondered how Aminata could consider herself free if just moments before she said this, she worried if Sam was wrong and worried that Lindo would search for her and find her. It is this fear evoked into the minds of the blacks that prove that they are in fact not free at all.