53 pages • 1 hour read
Someone Knows My Name
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Language
One of the most crucial themes of Someone Knows My Name is the power of language to acknowledge a person’s humanity, to fight against slavery, and to connect people to each other. Starting with the title and Chekura’s statement, it is evident that the acknowledgement of names—which is an essential part of language—confirms a person’s humanity and identity. Aminata demonstrates her understanding of the power of the written word throughout the text. She loves to read and builds connections with the people who teach her to read and write. Mamed, the slave overseer at Appleby’s indigo plantation, is the first person to teach Aminata to read. Lindo buys Aminata chiefly because of her ability to read, and he and his wife treat Aminata as a person with intellect, giving her respectable jobs that involve reading and writing. Even in Shelburne, Aminata’s ability to read helps her obtain a job at the newspaper, and her literacy helps her learn new things, stay informed, and support herself.
Upon arriving in New York City, the simple act of writing her name in the register at the Fraunces Tavern gives Aminata the feeling of humanity: “I had now written my name on a public document, and I was a person, with just as much right to life and liberty as the man who claimed to own me” (242). The Negroes of Canvas Town gather around Aminata whenever there is any significant news that would impact the lives of slaves and free blacks. Her ability to read makes her the source of information and liberty for illiterate blacks, and gives them access to a world previously closed to them. Her love for the written word leads her to teach Negroes to write at the local church, through which she builds a large enough name for herself to be recruited to write the “Book of Negroes.” This document is significant in depicting the power of language, especially in Aminata’s experience recording the stories of the Negroes she interviews. She reflects, “I liked […] recording how people obtained their freedom, how old they were and where they had been born. […] I loved the way people followed the movement of my hand as I wrote down their names and the way they made me read them aloud once I was done” (294). Writing the “Book of Negroes” gives Aminata the power grant Negroes a voice and a chance at liberation.
Most important, however, is Aminata’s ability to tell her own story. The power of language is seen in her refusal to allow an abolitionist ghostwriter to tell her story and her ability to speak for herself in front of the parliamentary committee. Even her dream of becoming a village djeli, or storyteller, demonstrates the power of language, as it makes her a respected keeper of history and stories. When she becomes a village djeli for a month, Aminata gains respect and honor by sharing stories of the distant, unfamiliar world of the toubabu. Language gives Aminata the power of a voice—it gives her the ability to access and transfer information, news, knowledge, and stories, and to stand for what she believes in.
Identity in Crisis and Transition
From Chapter 1, Someone Knows My Name explores just what constitutes a person’s identity and how identities transition when faced with crises. An elderly Aminata still identifies as the young girl she was when she was first stolen from Bayo—a Bamana and a Fula. However, the novel explores how Aminata’s identity extends beyond who she was as a child. Identity lies not only in a person’s origin but also in the changes and experiences a person faces throughout life. Aminata always retains a little bit of the places and people she leaves behind. In her identity lies the midwife skills of Bayo, the indigo harvests of Appleby’s plantation, the Lindos’ reading and arithmetic lessons in Charles Town, freedom amid the madness of New York during the American Revolution, the loss of May in Nova Scotia, the false promises in Sierra Leone, and the abolitionist movement in London.
The novel also explores the struggle of holding on to one’s identity in unfamiliar situations. Slavery jeopardizes the identities of Africans, as they figure out their new roles in a society dominated by whites. The way the captives call out their names in the slave ship’s hold is a stark example of clinging to any semblance of identity. The ship’s grotesque and inhumane conditions nearly strip every captive of their unique identity, but the simple acknowledgement of their names makes them feel that they still hold a part of who they used to be.
There is often a contrast between a person’s perception of their identity and who they really are. In the case of Aminata, she clings to who she was in Bayo for most of her life. She fails to realize that her identity undergoes major change with every new experience and loss. Although her transformed identity is noticeable to the reader throughout the novel, it is only when Aminata faces rejection from the Temne people of Sierra Leone that she realizes she is no longer a pure African.
The White Man’s Fantasy of Africa
The story takes place amid the historical context of slavery in relation to the American colonies, the American Revolution, and the abolitionist movement in London. Nestled beneath this context is the white man’s fantasy of Africans as savages used to justify the slave trade. White people fabricate several excuses to justify the slave trade that stems from ignorance and a refusal to acknowledge any humanity in Africans. This ignorance starts with the inability to look into the eyes of the Africans, an act that Aminata says indicates one’s humanity. This ignorance is also seen in the generalized categorization of all blacks as Africans without acknowledging the hundreds, if not thousands, of cultures and tribes in Africa. At many points throughout the text, many argue that slavery it what gave Aminata the opportunities to become worldly, literate, and intelligent. Even in London, the newspaper downplays Aminata’s historical presentation to the parliament while highlighting a fantastical exhibition of preserved African wildlife, a “spectacular showing of the frightful, lush, colorful barbarity of the animal kingdom in darkest Africa” (457). By creating a fantasy of the Africans as savage and uncultured while upholding slavery as the catalyst for civility, the white man finds it easier to stomach the degradation of an entire civilization.
The starkest example of the white man’s fantasy is found in the inaccurate and empty maps of Africa, and in the poetry of Jonathan Swift. Swift aptly puts the emotions of Africans into words, describing the placement of elephants on maps as a willfully ignorant depiction of savagery and barbarism. Aminata searches tirelessly for a map that gives insight on how to return to her homeland, but these maps only prove how little white people know, or care to know, about Africa.
Unlock all 53 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
