Post #7: Quotations

“My children were like phantom limbs, lost but still attached to me, gone but still painful.” (Hill 393)

Aminata refers to her children as phantom limbs, this is a metaphor for the feeling she still has for them. Aminata's feelings for her children are painful because she says "gone but still painful", even though there is nothing she can do about the loss of her children, her feelings are still painful.

"At times I still panic when surrounded by big white men with a purpose." (Hill 9)

This is one of the most significant quotes in the book because it shows how much slavery and inequality scarred Aminata into thinking that all white men are evil. Even though at this time Aminata is safe and the white men want to abolish slavery, Aminata's instinct over time has been not to trust white men.

"It excited me to imagine that fifty years later, someone might find an ancestor in the Book Of Negroes and say, 'That was my grandmother.'" (Hill 331)

This quote symbolizes identity, and how the free negroes have gained their identity again through an official document like The Book Of Negroes. This is similar to the first time Aminata writes her signature at the hotel for Soloman Lindo; this is the first time Aminata feels like she is free.

"Got a slave mama, then you is slave. Got a slave daddy, then you is slave. Any nigger in you at all, then is slave as clear as day." (Hill 153)

This quote states that the son or daughter of any slave is automatically a slave. This foreshadows Aminata's child, Mamadu, in being sold because of his status as a slave.

“He did not seem like the sort of man who would press a band of red-hot metal into my chest” (Hill 461)

When Aminata was on Bance Island near the end of the book, she compares the man who branded her to the man who owns the castle. This is significant because it foreshadows the argument she has with him about branding and she shows him her brand.