Abin

Stefanie Canals Baker

Prof. Adam Hill

History 100

4 April 2015

Abina and the Important Men is part of many studies on African slavery .

The book is , at first , a graphic story based on the court transcript of the testimony of an west African woman called Abina Mansah , who was enslaved illegally, but managed to escape and in 1876 , took his case to the court of Cape Coast in the British colony Gold Coast (now Ghana) . Written by historian Trevor Getz and illustrated by the South African artist Liz Clarke, Abina and the Important Men makes accessible and attractive to a broad spectrum of readers the unlearned history of this African woman so far ignored by history.

Focusion on slavery as a topic of discussion , Abina and the Important Men can address the

question of what it means to be a slave. On one hand , the Abinas story shows not only slaves

as victims but also as actors with their own initiative. On the other hand , we can

glimpse the diversity of experiences that slaves in West Africa had to go through

Last but not least, at the story of Abina two conceptions of slavery are easily recognizable: Judge

British , "economically patronizing , physically violent , marked by segregation and

discrimination in terms of human rights "and , in contrast , " the understanding of Abina

their own enslavement as a denial of identity and status , psychologically violent ,

more often than physically and , above all , personal " ( p . 147).

On the other hand , states that Abina Getz Important Men and the history is traversed by

gender , category they considered "useful for understanding the past " ( p . 148). in this

sense, the analysis reveals the history of Abina paternalism British judge and society

British of the time: they accepted the argument that girls enslaved in Africa

West were actually wives or children adopted by prominent...