{"id":63,"date":"2012-04-16T00:24:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T04:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=17896"},"modified":"2016-07-01T16:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T20:59:11","slug":"banned-books-awareness-the-book-of-negroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/2012\/04\/16\/banned-books-awareness-the-book-of-negroes\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Books Awareness: \u201cThe Book of Negroes\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Lawrence Hill wrote one of the bestselling and most-popular Canadian novels of all time; but what does he do for an encore?<\/p>\n

Hill, who will be in Edmonton this coming Tuesday (4\/17\/12) to deliver the University of Alberta\u2019s annual Henry Kreisel lecture, knows how to follow up a smash hit. He\u2019s just not letting it bother him much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a little mantra and it\u2019s that I can\u2019t really be responsible for a book\u2019s commercial failure or success; all I can do is write the best book that I can,\u201d Hill said in a telephone interview from his home in Hamilton, Ontario.<\/p>\n

For his appearance next week in Edmonton, in a billed speech \u201cOn Banning, Burning, and Other Inspired Responses to Books,\u201d Hill will reflect back on some not-so-positive experiences with his novel, The Book of Negroes<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 2007 book is inspired by a little-known historical document<\/a> of the same name, copies of which can be found in the New York Public Library, the Rockefeller Library at Colonial Williamsburg, and the U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C. In Canada, it can be found in the National Archives of Canada.<\/p>\n

Set in the 18th century, it tells the story of a young African girl who regains her freedom after being sold into slavery; the novel won the Rogers Writers\u2019 Trust Fiction Prize in 2007 and the Commonwealth Writers\u2019 Prize a year later. The year after that, it won the annual Canada Reads showdown on CBC-Radio, a literary popularity contest that skyrockets the winner\u2019s sales. All those triumphs helped the book\u2019s publication launch worldwide- but they also pressed some buttons.<\/p>\n

Although The Book of Negroes<\/em> is the title of an actual historical document, publishers in the United States, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia insisted the novel\u2019s title be changed to Someone Knows My Name<\/em>. In Quebec the book is titled Aminata<\/em>, the name of the main character.<\/p>\n

The most ominous response came when Hill received a letter from Roy Groenberg on behalf of the Dutch group, the Foundation to Honor and Restore Victims of Slavery in Suriname, who was offended by the use of the word \u201cNegro\u201d in the title. The group, who are descendants of the former Dutch colony in Suriname, gathered in an Amsterdam park last June and symbolically burned a cover of The Book of Negroes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To many, the Dutch protest seemed eccentric and laughable, but Hill didn\u2019t see it that way, and he warns that we laugh off such actions at our own peril.<\/p>\n

In a statement from the book\u2019s Dutch publisher, it was explained that the title was kept \u201cas-is\u201d to help highlight an issue that doesn\u2019t get a lot of attention in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlave history was horrid. We Dutch played a large role in it,\u201d read the letter.<\/p>\n

In the New Amsterdam colony (the original name of what is now New York) Dutch slave traders were among the first to import African slaves into the United States.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hill responded by explaining that he based his title on the historical document<\/a> that was used to record the names of over 3000 slaves who were British Loyalists during the American Revolution who were evacuated by the British and sent to Nova Scotia. Ship lists, physical descriptions of the slaves, and where they were bound were included. Hill’s intention was to bring this little-known piece of history to light. \u201cI have found that when given the opportunity to see what I am doing in this book and with this title, readers understand that the title is not intended to be offensive, but that it is used historically, to shed light on a forgotten document and on a forgotten migration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s entire response to the Dutch group was published by the Toronto Star<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we underestimate the impact that censorship and the fear of controversy have on the free circulation of books and ideas in public spaces, including in the public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example, Hill finds it \u201calmost surreal\u201d that one of the most frequently-banned books across North America today is the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling might be able to withstand the onslaught of countless schools removing the young wizard from their shelves, Hill notes, but for many other writers that sort of response would severely hamper their ability to enter the free market of ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that one of the most worrisome aspects about hostile reactions to books is the chill that it puts in other people. The degree to which it makes them fearful about the book in the classroom, because you\u2019re afraid you\u2019re going to get hammered by parents or others in the public if you do teach it, so why go through that anxiety, why not just pull out a safe book that nobody\u2019s objected to for the last 50 years?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt puts a chill on teachers, publishers and booksellers, especially if they\u2019re dealing with a work that isn\u2019t already enshrined in the canon of acceptable, famous lauded literary work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg Hollingshead, chair of The Writers\u2019 Union of Canada, stated in a press release that \u201cthe burning of books represents censorship at its worst. While we recognize the sensitivity over the use of the word \u2018Negro\u2019 in the book\u2019s title, The Book of Negroes<\/em> is a real document and Mr. Hill uses it deliberately to underscore the plight of African Americans being shipped from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plans for a movie adaption of The Book of Negroes<\/em> with filmmaker Clement Virgo have stalled and Hill and Virgo are now reworking the material for a possible TV miniseries.<\/p>\n

The Kreisel Lecture: \u201cOn Banning, Burning, and Other Inspired Responses to Books\u201d takes place at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 17, 2012, at the Timms Centre for the Arts, University of Alberta.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http:\/\/www.deepforestproductions.com\/BBARK.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources: Wikipedia, Edmonton Journal, CBC, Toronto Star, The Guardian<\/em>
\n\u00a9 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro\/Deep Forest Productions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Hill wrote one of the bestselling and most-popular Canadian novels of all time; but what does he do for an encore? Hill, who will be in Edmonton this coming Tuesday (4\/17\/12) to deliver the University of Alberta\u2019s annual Henry Kreisel lecture, knows how to follow up a smash hit. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[377,378,379,2,1],"tags":[398],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-banned-books-awareness-and-reading-for-knowledge","category-censorship","category-social-change","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-negroes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}