Someone Knows My Name

Jonathan’s Swifts poetry is repeatedly alluded to after Aminata first reads it at the Government House in Halifax, particularly this excerpt from “On Poetry: A Rhapsody,” published in 1733:

“So geographers, in Afric-maps

With savage-pictures fill their gaps;

And o’er unhabitable downs

Place elephants for want of towns.”

The line “elephants for want of towns” serves as a powerful motif that represents the theme of the white man’s fantasy of Africa. The words reflect how Aminata and other Africans feel about the white’s ignorance of Africa and their grotesque desire to justify slavery with this imagined savagery. As white men refuse to acknowledge or understand the humanity and the many cultures and tribes that exist in Africa, they place elephants and other wild animals in the place of what would be towns on any other map. Their maps of Africa reflect their fantasy of the savage, animalistic African. In the white imagination, there are no towns in Africa—only barbarity.

Even the queen of England gives Swift’s poetry to Aminata as a gift, making known her understanding of the white man’s fantasy. An elderly Aminata wishes to draw a map of the places she has lived with images that represent her own perceptions and experiences. This motif supports the argument that the maps of Africa portray perceived and imagined depictions of a place rather than accurate representations of location.

Lions are repeatedly used to symbolize many things that strike Aminata as powerful and strong; they also reflect her sense of powerlessness when facing something unimaginably stronger. When a young Aminata first leaves her homeland, she sees a mountain in the shape of lion that is powerless to save her. To Aminata, even the most magnificent lion is defenseless against slavery and the dangerous journey across the Atlantic. The slave ship itself is also referred to as a lion, and its treacherous hold is its anus. Here the lion symbolizes the power of the slave trade and the way it swallows entire villages whole. The inhumane conditions are reflected in the image of the captives held half-digested in the powerful lion’s anus, where there seems to be no way out.

In another instance Aminata calls her story a sleeping lion that is lying in wait, symbolizing the power of the written word and the truth of her story. Although the abolitionists claim to believe her, they do not truly hear her story. It is only through the completion of her story that the resting beast will awaken and demonstrate the truth of slavery.

Aminata repeatedly dreams about the rabbits that she, her mother, and Fomba come across when returning to Bayo the night she is stolen. Three rabbits cross their path right before the slavers attack, and Aminata’s mother stops Fomba from killing the pregnant one. When Aminata is first sold as a refuse slave at the auction and marched toward Appleby’s farm, she sees these rabbits in her dream:

“Rather than slipping into the bushes, the creature stopped and turned and stared at me long and hard, until I saw that she had my mother’s eyes. For some time, she hopped along ahead of me, showing me the way […] The rabbit turned into my mother, balancing a slain rabbit on a platter on her head” (117).

Here the rabbit becomes her mother showing her the way, and the slain rabbit on the platter represents Aminata’s lost freedom. When she is once again free in the woods of Manhattan, the rabbits appear in another dream, stopping midflight to stare at her. The same rabbits that signaled the start of Aminata’s life as a slave appear again and again to reflect her state of freedom.