Tichaona Chinyelu

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I came across this book while doing research into Black people who chose the British team in the competition for control of resources known as the American Revolution. Narrated by the fictional Aminatta Diallo, the majority of the book is delineated by Diallo’s desire to return to the home she knew as a child. That home, Africa (a word she hears for the first time in the then colonies) turns out not to be the same home she remembered. It has been extremely negatively impacted on by the trade in human beings. Drawn from an actual historical document known as Book of Negroes, Hill does such an effective job of bringing to life the “reality” of the Black Loyalists listed in the document, I would be remiss not to wholeheartedly recommend this piece of historical fiction which won the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.

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