Identity
Saidiya Hartman is from this U.S. city.
What is Brooklyn, New York?
The route that villagers take towards freedom (from slavecatchers) in Chapter 12, "Fugitive Dreams."
What is, escape/fleeing/fugitivity by foot along unmarked paths, to a distant village where they surround themselves by a large wall?
The phrase "Lose Your Mother" means this.
What is to lose your sense of family/kinship/roots/heritage as a result of enslavement?
This word describes something by which the memory of a person, thing, or event is preserved, as a monument, a custom, or an observance.
What is a memorial?
Who is James Baldwin?
Gender comes in during Lose Your Mother in this way.
What is...multiple examples?
One historical person, or group of people, who Hartman describes as traveling to Africa with the idea of creating a utopia of racial equality.
What are... multiple possibilities from Chapter 2, Afrotopia?
In the Prologue, Hartman describes her trip through this city (1), with this person (2).
What is Montgomery, Alabama, with her grandfather?
Hartman visits this memorial (1) during her trip to Ghana and makes this critique of it (2).
What is Elimina Castle?
What is her critique of the fresh coat of paint, the lack of information there about the experiences of enslaved peoples, or the inability to comprehend enslavement even when being in the building?
These two features of the genre of memoir show up in Hartman's book.
What are sharing intimate/embarrassing moments, professing to be truthful, creative writing about one's life, and participating in the subgenre of heritage travel writing?
This is one example of Hartman's discussion of Christianity.
What is... multiple possibilities?
Hartman describes this way that road trips change travelers.
"The men got frisky and aroused, as wives and respectability fell behind in the distance" (213).
When Hartman goes with a tour group to retrace the internal slave route, the other group members treat her in this way.
What is making jokes about her slave ancestry or teasing her about her search for roots? (154)
Who spearheaded making slave dungeons, castles, etc. into tourist sites in Ghana? (1) What is this type of tourism called? (2)
Who is the Ghanaian government and what is dark tourism?
Hartman uses these three metaphors to describe dungeons in Chapter 6 "So Many Dungeons."
What are a grave, a womb, a factory, a cocoon, bowels/a large intestine/entrails, a wound (110-112)?
"It was one thing to be a stranger in a strange land, and an entirely worse state to be a stranger to yourself." In this quote, Hartman is comparing this figure (1) to this figure (2).
What is a traveler feeling out of place to an enslaved person whose name and heritage is being erased?
Hartman is referring to this city in Ghana when she says, "the street names inscribed on maps with unequivocal certainty were virtually useless."
What is Accra? (24)
Mary Ellen and John are these types of travelers (1) and are in Ghana for this reason (2).
Who are expatriates? What is seeking roots, but now staying because they do not know where else to go that would feel like home (28-29)?
An example of Hartman using "critical fabulation" to creatively fill in how historical events might have happened.
What is Critical Fabulation? "Through which a researcher might use narrative to respond creatively to archival omissions, struggling 'both to tell an impossible story and to amplify the impossibility of its telling.' That essay’s tantalizingly brief experiment in storytelling was riven by doubt, qualification, and cautious respect for 'what cannot be known.'” (Hartman's "Venus in Two Acts" 2008)
This theorist coined the term "aura" in the 1930s.
Who is Walter Benjamin?
Mary Ellen says that she is no longer willing to call herself an African American for this reason.
What is her disconnect from Africa after living there?
"'I've been here too long to call myself anything except a black American...That is what feels true.' For Mary Ellen, there was no longer a future in being an African American, only the burden of history and disappointment" (29).
When Hartman writes, "Don't dawdle. Don't stray from the path. Hold your brother's hand," she is voicing this person (1) speaking to this person (2).
Who are those fleeing enslavement by traveling North through Ghana, speaking to their children? (223).
The beginning of the slave trade in Ghana occurred in this way (date and key figures).
What is January 19th, 1482, with Diego de Azambuja from Portugal and King Caramansa (60-61)?
Hartman visits the dungeon of Cape Coast Castle many different times in an attempt to wrap her mind about what happened there. These are three of the different visit experiences that she has.
What is closing her eyes and trying to imagine those who were there, visiting with a "chirpy teenager," visiting alone, visiting with tour groups, going with "an intoxicated docent," getting into an argument with another visitor, among others (117-119)?
Three formal/structural observations about this sentence are:
"Neither blood nor belonging accounted for my presence in Ghana, only the path of strangers impelled toward the sea."
What is alliteration, formal language ("neither, nor"), personal pronoun, "stranger" and "path" word choice, "impelled" word choice, sea imagery?