Kwame Alexander’s New Book About Slavery Focuses on Africa, Not America

THE DOOR OF NO RETURN, by Kwame Alexander

Behind the seemingly simple particulars of historical past in Kwame Alexander’s new novel-in-verse, “The Door of No Return” — the primary guide in a trilogy following a Ghanaian boy caught within the praxis of the Atlantic slave commerce — there lurks complexity. The truth that the slave ship transporting Kofi flies the U.S. flag when the novel is about in September 1860, months earlier than the outbreak of the American Civil Battle and many years after the abolition of the Atlantic slave commerce in america, speaks to the clandestine nature of the enterprise and its persistence regardless of the legal guidelines towards it. In fact, these points are by no means explored. Alexander understands easy methods to choose an acceptable context for what could possibly be considered as a examine in writing, publishing and advertising a well-liked work on slavery in our time for younger readers.  

The story is pretty uncomplicated. Kofi lives together with his household in an Asante village that already displays the affect of British colonialism. He’s pressured to talk solely English on the college he attends, and he has challenged a boy who bullies him to a swim race of their native river. He’s additionally in love together with his schoolmate Ama however is just too shy to inform her. Kwasi, Kofi’s older brother, by chance kills an opponent within the annual wrestling match towards their rival village, which retaliates by killing him and taking Kofi to be traded by the British at a citadel on the coast, the place he encounters the door of no return. On the opposite facet lies “gradual passage/over troubled waters.”  

“It was a tough story to jot down, nevertheless it was one which wanted to be advised. I wrote it for the me no one is aware of. For the you who remains to be turning into. For the chance that’s in us,” Alexander says in his creator’s notice. (One senses an unbelievable effort to be politic, nearly a plea for persistence.) “Now you need to stroll by means of. Together with your eyes unshut. Together with your coronary heart unlocked. And your thoughts as free because the mighty sea.” 

Alexander is an completed author, embellished with the highest awards given to authors of literature for younger folks. He’s conscious of the minefield a guide can characterize in right this moment’s American training system and of the numerous mother and father who wish to ban Black tales that make white youngsters really feel unhealthy about themselves. So he compromises. He exhibits that the baddies embody Africans, starting from those that are ashamed of their Africanness and wish to have fun Europeanness (just like the trainer Goodluck Phillip), to the college bully who traumatizes Kofi (his cousin), to the lads who seize Kofi and his brother and homicide Kwasi in entrance of him. White folks make a short look on the finish, however Alexander can’t be accused of blaming slavery completely on them.  

Alexander’s dutiful analysis is on full show — the quoting of proverbs, the usage of Adinkra symbols as chapter markers, the strategically translated Twi phrases to acclimate his American readers.  

The issue with historic novels is that they must steadiness the creator’s perspective on the historical past with the seductions of a novel — character, plot, motion. Since Kofi has but to achieve land, a lot much less America, by the top of this installment, we’ll have to attend and see how Alexander treats the U.S. position within the Atlantic slave commerce’s perpetuation. In the meantime, “The Door of No Return” offers us a boy’s journey story that can little question translate nicely to an animated movie, with descriptions of the African panorama, a love story, the tragic penalties of human cruelty and the magical energy of vanity. Because it involves a detailed, Afua, a fellow prisoner who commits suicide moderately than face being raped once more by the ship’s sailors, roots for Kofi to flee: “When it’s time, you’ll know. Observe your dream.” The favored theme music is already organizing itself.

Kwame Dawes, a Ghanaian-born poet and fiction author, is the editor in chief of Prairie Schooner journal.

THE DOOR OF NO RETURN | By Kwame Alexander | 416 pp. | Little, Brown & Firm | $17.99 | Ages 10 and up