Hilary Sheets Anth 242 Dr. Buchman 26 March 2014 Write-Up #21 For write-up 20 I decided to read Katherine A. Dettwyler’s ethnography Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, and I read the article that Jacob sent out to the class. In chapter four of Dancing Skeletons, Dettwyler wrote about how Malians like to joke with one another and love to laugh at themselves and other people. “More than anything else, Malians like to laugh—at themselves, at each other, certainly at toubabs…at the ludicrous world in which they find themselves living—and I liked to make them laugh” (40). This observation also exists in the ethnography Monique and the Mango Rains. The author of Monique and the Mango Rains is Kris Holloway; she studied people who lived in a Malian village.
They record everything that he and his mother do from their daily emotional states to how much they are eating. The boys name is Octavian and he is the prince of an African nation that his mother had to leave while she was still pregnant with Octavian. Octavian learns that he and his mother are slaves and that he is the purpose of a scientific experiment. During this book the themes of freedom and restraint are consistently portrayed by Octavian’s struggle internally and externally. The thing that I liked about this book was how unique of an idea that it was initially and then how the author built off of this idea to build the story up to a point where the reader can become attached and entangled in the story.
There have been many instances in real life where this theme has been a major aspect of our society, Martin Luther King Jr. had many speeches, writings, and readings that include the same theme that when faced with adversity the best thing to do is to persevere and good things will come of it. The Book of Negroes is an inspirational book in which the author—Lawrence Hill, illustrates the theme of perseverance in the face of adversity through the character Aminata Diallo. At the tender age of eleven, Aminata was abducted from her village of Bayo in West Africa. From then on, she was forced to work as a slave to her different captors. During her travels over-seas, Aminata witnessed severe brutality and what would now be considered crimes against humanity.
Research/ Development All throughout the 19th century slavery spread all across America with the south particular being very fond of it. These slaves came from different parts of the world and abundantly from the slave trade in Africa, which was shut down. The culture was defined with language, music, religion, food, dance and art. This was all expressed by a slave from Mobile, Alabama named Charity Anderson who told her story of the slave life. She lived her life as an indoor slave and she actually loved being a slave!
It seems to me that the personification of animals reveals the parallel actions and dispositions of man that are either celebrated or persecuted. These animals are often depicted as possessing wisdom, cleverness, greediness, deceitfulness, kindness, jealousy, or treachery as to showcase a lesson of some sort— sometimes of survival and other times of morality. Many African fables exist about a plethora of animals, including the leopard—as in The Fish and the Leopard’s Wife—the tortoise and the hare, the goat, the python, the elephant, the chameleon, and the bat, and many more. Along with offering life lessons, these animals and stories provide answers to many Africans regarding both, existential questions, and why certain animals look and act the way they do. For instance the aim of the tales, Why the Bat is Ashamed to be Seen in the Daytime and Why the Bat flies by Night is to offer an explanation as to why the bat only flies by night.
The Interesting Narrative reveals this influence through the book’s radical arguments in favor of individual equality and its opposition to slavery as a cruel and inhumane practice contrary to enlightened society. Early on, Equiano describes the relatively benign conditions of slavery in his native region of Africa, wherein slaves lived much like any other people, even sometimes owning slaves of their own (pp. 39-40). Upon being initially enslaved, his main hardships were those of separation from his family and “the mortifying circumstance of
This book detailed how he felt about the black African people he met their ways, private lives morals, and religion. Ibn Battuta lived quite a life and kept records about his travels. Battuta’s words were edited by a scribe by the name Ibn Juzayy who stated, Battuta was “one of the greatest travelers” of that age. All of Battuta’s stories could not be verified and it was known that maybe he stretched the truth at times. The most peculiar aspect about Ibn Battuta’s travel to me were that even though he went to almost fifty countries is that he was running into people he had met before in his life.
By this time slavery had been abolished throughout a large portion of the world and oddly enough this Brazilian curiosity raised much interest from all around the globe. The images suggest a wide variation in what it meant to be enslaved during the time before abolition in Brazil in 1888. The photo on the left portrays a typical field slave under the watchful eye of an overseer during the violent enslavement of Africa. African slaves were predominantly field workers and were notorious for attempting to escape due to their overly oppressive enslavement. On the other hand the picture on the right portrays a slave for hire in which were owned to work independently in the streets as carriers or vendors.
Living, Eating, and Working as Slaves In the early 1865, slavery had come to the United States of America. Millions of slaves were told that they were free, and therefore many of them had been interviewed to share both of their happy and awful conditions they had during their slavery. The various conditions related to food, living, and work influenced whether or not slaves challenged their owners in the late 1800s. Some slaves were pretty satisfied with their owners but the others had lived the lives that people nowadays could ever imagine. The desire of being free resembled the awful conditions that some of them had.
Like the Native Americans, not much was known about the customs of the Africans before their contact with Europeans. Africans were forcibly brought to America to be slaves and much of their language and culture was lost. Slaves that were born in America learned about their culture from the older Africans but much of their experiences made them more African-American than anything. Slaves rooted their music in African rhythms and customs. Just as the Native Americans, Africans commonly associated their music with daily life; however, when they were brought to America, African slaves combined their music with the anguish they felt on a daily basis.