The story of Ama is the story of an African slave, beginning in her Bekpokpam village in 1775 where she is captured by rival tribesman, and ending on a sugar plantation a world away in Brazil.
Written by the South African author Manu Herbstein, resident in Ghana since 1970, the novel was received to critical acclaim, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2002.
Ama is not a history book, but an imaginatively-crafted novel, bringing together meticulous historical research to construct a what-might-have been story about a (sometimes implausibly) intelligent and courageous woman forced to overcome rape, rebellion, and concubinage.
Neither is it a depressing book, or a straight-forward critique of the slave traders. Through Ama, a representative of millions of slaves, Herbstein strives to reveal the complexity and multiple complicity in what is still too often seen as a colonisers-exploiting-Africa situation. It shows that slavery was not a black-and-white issue; either morally, or racially. 'Oppressors' and ‘victims" could be found on both sides of the geographical divide. It also highlights the human vein, which ran through what was of course a human trade - offering sensitive depictions of the mish-mash of people on both sides of the economic arrangement.
Born Nandze – her name later changed to signify the first day, a Saturday, of her Asante ownership – the young Ama is kidnapped from her deserted village by Dagomba traders one afternoon, and that sets the course for much of what is to follow.
The brutal rape she experiences at the hands of her first captor, an African neighbour, is just the first in a humiliating string of physical and sexual abuse throughout the story. Her rapist is cold, meditated, and without feeling – but Herbstein has not simply created a cast of characters who fall into the good-and-evil mould.
One of the Dagomba guards becomes a friend to Ama, for example, saving her from certain-death after a failed escape attempt, deploring the callousness of his boss, and patiently teaching her the local Asante language.
In Kumase, Ama finds herself a gift to the royal household as a slave to the Queen Mother and, in time, as the young Asantehene’s first lover. The opulence of the Asante kingdom is enriched by slavery; but again, the ‘evil’ is not clear, the power dynamics blurred. This relationship between slave and royal is an interesting one; with Ama, as the older more experienced partner, actually having an upper hand; although when the royal household finds out about the Asantehene’s real love for Ama, she is banished to Elmina Castle.
Rape of female slaves is common place in the Castle, but Ama’s situation is more complicated – and unusual – as she is taken as a concubine, almost-wife to the Dutch Director General. Pieter De Bruyn has a real love for Ama, and in some ways she comes to return his affection: seeing an old, needy and caring man inside the Governor’s private face. But she finds it difficult to reconcile the humanbeing underneath, with the slave trader and oppressor; whilst he finds it hard to see his beautiful Eurocised Ama as just one of the slaves in his dungeons. Ultimately, however, she is no freer than the others: a reality which is all too painfully felt when de Bruyn dies and she finds herself shoved back down into the dungeons and across the sea to Brazil.
Ama arrives in the Bahia de Salvador with only one eye; beaten almost to death on board the ship for an attempted insurrection, she nonetheless remains upbeat and defiant – and eventually ends up finding and marrying the freedom-fighter, Tomba, with whom she conspired.
Her body, her experiences, are a metaphor for the plight of Africa – explored, exploited, lied to and abandoned, by Africans and Europeans alike. For the most part, these comparisons are ones which the reader can draw for him or herself: the concept of colonial exploitation has often been engendered, but the historical lessons and theorising are rarely made explicit in what is a very readable book, as a novel as well as an analogy.
There are several junctures at which the author seems to inflict his own views too heavily on his characters, however:
"I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave, inside me here and here, I am still a free woman,” Ama declares; as she and Tomba come to discuss the nature of their “new Africa” in Brazil, their level of consciousness seems a little far-fetched.
The legacy of this first generation of slaves in America is still felt today however; the perhaps premature consciousness of Ama still as alive as ever. As the novelist himself concludes, “The end of this story is yet to be written.”
