Here are 100 books that Elmina, 'The Little Europe' fans have personally recommended if you like
Elmina, 'The Little Europe'.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As an engineer, I have constructed bridges, highways, and power plants throughout Africa, and on journeys learned and explored the continent's history. My novel, Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. My 200 plus sources, and excerpts from many of them, are listed on the companion website.
In this classic history, Paul Lovejoy examines how indigenous African slavery developed from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries within an international context, leading to the Atlantic trade conducted by Europeans and Americans. He describes the processes of enslavement and the marketing of slaves and assesses slavery's role in African and world history.
This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European abolition and assesses slavery's role in African history. The book corrects the accepted interpretation that African slavery was mild and resulted in the slaves' assimilation. Instead, slaves were used extensively in production, although the exploitation methods and the relationships to world markets differed from those in the…
I’ve been fascinated by the Atlantic slave trade since 2007, when I first studied the business papers of a Liverpool merchant who had enslaved over a hundred thousand people. I was immediately struck by the coldness of the merchant’s accounts. I was also drawn to the ways in which the merchant’s profit-motivated decisions shaped the forced migrations and experiences of their victims. I have subsequently extended my research to examine slave traders across the vastness of the Atlantic World. I'm also interested in the ways that the slave trade’s history continues to shape the modern world, from the making of uneven patterns of global economic development to such diverse areas as the financing of popular music.
This book really helped me to look beyond slave trading merchants’ papers to think about the lived realities of the slave trade for those merchants’ victims.
Smallwood follows enslaved people from their initial sale on the African coast, aboard the slave ships, and then through their sale and seasoning in the English Americas—a model that brilliantly exposes the multi-staged way that captive Africans were commodified within the slave trade.
Saltwater Slavery also details the experiences of enslaved people within the trade, especially the mental and physical trauma that they suffered aboard the slave ships.
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market.
Smallwood's story is animated by deep research and gives us a startlingly graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. Ultimately, Saltwater Slavery details how African people were transformed into Atlantic commodities in the process. She begins her narrative on the shores of seventeenth-century Africa, tracing how…
As an engineer, I have constructed bridges, highways, and power plants throughout Africa, and on journeys learned and explored the continent's history. My novel, Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. My 200 plus sources, and excerpts from many of them, are listed on the companion website.
Despite the vast literature on the transatlantic slave trade, the role of sailors aboard slave ships has remained unexplored. This book fills that gap by examining every aspect of their working lives, from their reasons for signing on a slaving vessel to their experiences in the Caribbean and the American South after their human cargoes had been sold. It explores how they interacted with men and women of African origin at their ports of call, from the Africans they traded with, to the slaves and ex-slaves they mingled within the port cities of the Americas. Most importantly, it questions their interactions with the captive Africans they were transporting during the dread middle passage, arguing that their work encompassed the commoditisation of these people ready for sale.
Despite the vast literature on the transatlantic slave trade, the role of sailors aboard slave ships has remained unexplored. This book fills that gap by examining every aspect of their working lives, from their reasons for signing on a slaving vessel, to their experiences in the Caribbean and the American South after their human cargoes had been sold. It explores how they interacted with men and women of African origin at their ports of call, from the Africans they traded with, to the free black seamen who were their crewmates, to the slaves and ex-slaves they mingled with in the…
As an engineer, I have constructed bridges, highways, and power plants throughout Africa, and on journeys learned and explored the continent's history. My novel, Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. My 200 plus sources, and excerpts from many of them, are listed on the companion website.
In the introduction, dated July 1978, Mattoso writes. … my purpose in writing this book was to discover what life was really like for the slaves in Brazil … This book is addressed to an audience of general readers. I have therefore felt free to dispense with the usual scholarly apparatus of extensive footnotes and bibliography … Its title … signals my intention to adopt the standpoint of the slaves themselves … to trace the various stages in the lives of the slaves as individuals and of the slave group as a community.
The book has the great advantage of placing the slave in the center of the history not simply as a type of labor, but as an actor whose culture, actions and decisions influenced the operation of the system... written with verve and grace for a general readership.
For me, writing fiction is a way of tackling issues of fate and identity through storytelling. I believe we’re each the result of an intersection between personality and history and I’m interested in the way our time and place impacts us and creates a backdrop for our lives. My first novel, The Wayward Moon, is historical fiction set in the 9th-century Middle East. My second novel follows a Jewish family back six generations to Belarus. But no matter what period I’m writing about, the most important thing is always to tell a good story.
I really admire how this book traces two lines of a tumultuous family history through a series of short stories.
Opening in Ghana 250 years ago, the book follows two trajectories: one family branch that is kidnapped into slavery in America, and a second that remains in Africa while collaborating with slave traders.
This is a brave book that is not afraid to pose difficult questions, but in doing so, it opens a clear-eyed perspective on the way that history shapes us.
Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.…
I have been moved by women’s stories that are buried in time (but not quite gone!) since I was a young girl. As a college student and now professor (I teach writing and gender studies), much of my work is focused on telling hidden stories for the first time and stories where the record needs correcting. This is probably to do with my childhood; I am the oldest daughter in a loving but difficult Irish-Catholic family where women were often shamed for many reasons. When I was 15, I read Sylvia Plath for the first time and knew—there was more to this story, and I meant to find it out.
I love nothing more than a book that unsettles me, that I grasp almost bodily in the reading but have to return to again and again to truly understand. Lose Your Mother is that kind of book. In Chapter Seven, Hartman tells us that, while working in the archive of the Atlantic slave trade, she came across a scandal: on board the slave ship Recovery, two African girls—one named Venus—are murdered by the captain, John Kimber.
A trial ensues. A mate is put on the stand, who admits there was a book on the ship, a list of all its horrors, The Dead Book, but it’s lost now. Lose Your Mother is Hartman’s attempt to write her version of The Dead Book without committing the same violence against the girls that they endured in their short lives. How she wonders, can we reimagine life for Venus when all we know…
In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman journeys along a slave route in Ghana, following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast. She retraces the history of the Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy.
There were no survivors of Hartman's lineage, nor far-flung relatives in Ghana of whom she had come in search. She traveled to Ghana in search of strangers. The most universal definition of the slave is a stranger—torn from kin and country. To lose your mother is to suffer the…
I write about inequality in international development, American communities, environmental movements, and workplaces. I’ve been doing this reporting for over a decade. I’ve also worked in global health, an experience that has given me a first-hand glimpse into the depths and texture of inequality we have manufactured in our current world, including within the organizations and movements that purportedly challenge such global inequality. As a reader, I’m equally passionate about immersive nonfiction and fiction. I’ll dive into anything that’s driven by a good story.
When a friend told me about this book, I was immediately taken by the title. Who could resist? The novel reads like a dream; it took me a little while to get situated in time and space but in a deliciously languid way.
I loved the way the author considers the intimate ways that bureaucracy and authoritarianism work themselves into one person’s daily life and the creaky after-effects of British bureaucracy across the former Empire. I appreciated that nothing is idealized here; no one comes out looking pretty.
I have had the pleasure of exploring many career paths and businesses as an attorney, CPA, minister, life coach, media company CEO, publisher, international motivational speaker, and author. Yet it was not until illness from stage 4 endometriosis almost took me out that I realized that life happiness and success were not synonymous. I took the time to 1) figure out the difference and 2) create a pathway to joy. Joy is the step beyond happiness, and it ensures life satisfaction and longevity. And this is the answer to my question – and the topic – what am I living for? I am living for joy, peace, and fulfillment.
Walking with the author on his journey from successful African American businessman in Montgomery, Alabama to empowered and enriched Nigerian and Ghana American now living in Accra, Ghana brings the echoes of Dr. King's "dream" to life in the halls of our hearts: we realize that to walk equally with others first requires that we know ourselves, proclaiming proudly who we are and whose we are. Found My People gives us the tools, encouragement, and benefits to do so.
This book will challenge your concept of heritage, delight you with the serendipities of destiny, and inspire you to find your people! I was inspired to extend my DNA search and dig deeper into my heritage because of it.
Growing up, no one needed to tell me that I’m a highly sensitive person – although they did. The label was confusing: was it a bad thing? I wasn’t sure. So, I tried to keep myself in check and followed my love of words into a legal career. Other people’s books became my refuge: a safe place to explore the full reach of my empathy and find connection. Reading still gives me sanctuary. Only now, since leaving law to become an author and poet myself, I also embrace the emotional rollercoaster of sharing my own creativity. It’s balm for my bittersweet soul.
Developing alongside Afi Tekple through this book was like spending time with an inspirational cousin.
Despite being in my mid-thirties, I frequently feel like I’m just beginning to shake off external expectations and live my own life. Unlike Afi, my scenarios don’t involve marrying a man I’ve never met for the sake of my family. But constantly striving to “do the right thing” – as defined by others – has been an emotional burden.
I loved this sensitively written, funny, sensual portrayal of a woman locating her own inner compass. It helped me believe that speaking up for the contours of my existence – and even disappointing a few people along the way – is healthy. Inevitably, some things are lost as a result. But there’s also much to be gained.
A feelgood debut set in modern-day Ghana, about fashion and finding your voice
'Vivid, witty and utterly absorbing.' Daily Mail
In one of the most talked about and hilarious debuts of the year, Afi Tekple, a bright young seamstress from a small town in Ghana, is convinced by her family to marry a man she has never met.
Elikem Ganyo is a wealthy businessman whose family has chosen Afi in the hope that she will distract him from a relationship with another woman they think is inappropriate.
The fact that she doesn't know Elikem seems a small price to pay…
As a poet and a novelist, I'm fascinated by the places where these two genres meet, undo each other, and create something new again. That sounds a lot like what love can do, and whenever I read a long poem that achieves a unique aesthetic unity, I feel the writer has found a new way to love the world, to love the reader. And, as usual, both the world and the reader are challenged by that love—to grow.
I studied this book with my graduate students a few years ago, and it’s truly a remarkable achievement. If there’s a (somewhat artificial) spectrum of book-length poems ranging from fragmented lyricism to linear narration, Dawes’ Prophets is fascinating because it lives somewhere in the middle: a powerful narrative informs the lyrical intensity throughout.
I highly recommend this book to writers who want to expand their ideas of what can be done with narration.
Set in Jamaica in the late 1980s and 1990s, Prophets is a poem of rhythmic and metaphoric inventiveness that portrays the social and cultural resonances of Jamaican society along with the tension between an ebullient cynicism and a heartfelt desire for faith. As 24-hour television, belching out the voices of American hellfire preachers, competes with dancehall, slackness, and ganja for Jamaican minds, Clarice and Thalbot preach their own conflicting visions. Clarice has used her gifts to raise herself from the urban Jamaican ghetto. She basks in the adulation of her followers as they look to her for their personal salvation.…
