Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Eighteenth-century Africa is a land of many tribes and kingdoms–and many enmities between them. While tending her young brother one day, young Nandzi is captured by slavers of another tribe. Enduring humiliation and rape, she endures, eventually being sold to the Queen Mother of the Asante, who renames her Ama. Ama makes a pleasant life for herself among the Asante, until the new king falls in love with her. Ama is framed for a theft and sold again–this time to slave dealers who sell her to the Dutch slave traders on the coast. There the Director-General, Pieter De Bruyn, takes her as his mistress; becoming fond of her, he also teaches her to read and write. Once again Ama has a peaceful life–until De Bruyn dies, and she is sent across the Atlantic to the slave market of Brazil. There she must begin again to carve a new life for herself, this time as a plantation slave. And there she meets and falls in love with Tomba, a rebellious warrior whose spirit matches her own; a love doomed by their desire to be free….
An engrossing and powerful story of a woman of courage, intelligence, and strength, Ama is not for children, the squeamish, or 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 book that deserves a much larger audience than it will probably get.
