Summary
H, a sharecropper, protested as four policemen arrested him and put him in a jail cell. After the police left, he talked to his cellmate about his supposed crime: looking at a white woman. They talked for a few minutes about the end of slavery and white people's continuing ability to get any black man they wanted arrested, and then H's cellmate fell asleep. H spent four days in jail before the guards told him he could leave after paying the ten dollar fine. H only had five dollars, and he said he couldn't call anyone to get more, thinking of how his woman Ethe wouldn't help him now that he had cheated on her. Because he couldn't pay the fine, H was chained to a line of men the next morning and sent off to work in the coal mines outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
When they got to the coal mine site, the pit boss examined each of the men. One boy was so young and scared that he cried and peed in his pants while being examined. When it was H's turn to be examined, the chief deputy and pit boss talked about how big he was and how much to pay for him. H told them that he was a free man, but the pit boss threatened him with a knife. Starting then, H spent his days down in the mines shoveling coal. His arms and shoulders burned constantly from exertion, but he saw that men who didn't shovel enough were whipped harshly, sometimes until they died. There were other dangers in the mines: collapses and explosions could kill men by the hundreds. His memories of freedom grew fainter, but he held on to his memories of Ethe.
Most of the other people working in the mines were black men who had been arrested for small crimes, though sometimes a white man would be brought in. One day, H was partnered with a white man named Thomas. Thomas had been so weak and scared of being killed that on his first day he collapsed to the ground in tears. H picked up his own shovel in one hand, Thomas's in the other, and shoveled enough to meet both men's quotas for the day. The pit boss watched, and, when he had finished, told Thomas that H had saved his life. In bed that night, H lost feeling in both of his arms. He told his friend Joecy repeatedly that he didn't want to die. The next day, H and Thomas were paired together again. H could not move his arms all morning, even to take food for breakfast. Joecy was the cutter, meaning he had to go into a very small space, cut into the rock, and then put dynamite in. When Joecy, Thomas, and a man named Bull saw that H couldn't move his arms, they all helped him get to the quota. H and Thomas talked briefly that evening, but within the month Thomas had died and H couldn't even remember his name. He lost touch with Bull and Joecy as well.
In 1889, H finally finished his incarceration at the mine in Rock Slope. He didn't know what home he had to go to now, so on his first evening he walked a long while until he found a black bar. He struck up conversation with a woman named Dinah, and flirted happily until a man made H reveal his whip scars, which marked him as a con. He moved to Pratt City where most of the population was made up of people who had worked in the mines as convicts and now worked in the mines as free men. He found Joecy, who was living with his wife Jane and a son named Lil Joe. Joecy and his wife were very proud that their son could write, and offered to have him write a letter to Ethe from H, though H did not want to. The next day, H went to the mine with Joecy and got a job. In Pratt City, life was easier for H than it had been at the mine in Rock Slope, and the city was highly integrated. H lived with Joecy's family, and as soon as his first wages came in, he started building his own house next door.
Joecy encouraged H to join the union, and soon he was one of the major voices at meetings. A doctor at the meeting argued for safer conditions, including proper ventilation and shorter hours, but H and many other men argued that they wanted to push for more pay instead. A young boy who had lost a leg working in a mine was brought into the meeting, and H imagined what had happened to him. Walking home after the meeting, H started to panic about how his life could have been. He went home and asked Lil Joe to write a letter to Ethe. Soon, the union called for a strike. H got in a fight with a white man at the union meeting about how different the white and black ex-cons were, since the white ex-cons had committed much worse crimes than the black ex-cons. The strike began the next day. The mine brought in more convicts to fill in for the missing workers. Lil Joe helped the miners make signs with the same demands that had been delivered to the bosses at the mine. The next day, the union men took the signs and stood outside the mine. As the new group of convicts walked by, many of them children, H shouted for them to be let go. One of the boys in the line started to run away, and he was shot. This set off the union members, who attacked the bosses and broke the mine equipment. H grabbed one man by the throat and held him over the mine shaft, but he decided not to kill him.
After six more months of striking, the bosses gave in and agreed to pay the workers 50 cents more. The same night that the end of the strike was announced at a union meeting, H went home and found Ethe in his small house. She was cooking greens in his kitchen. She told him that she had received his letter over 2 months before, and since then had been thinking about the time when he had called her another woman's name. The greens started to burn as H and Ethe talked, and when she turned around to scrape the bottom of the pot, H took her in his arms and she eventually leaned back into him.
Akua had been brought up in the missionary school where her mother Abena had come after leaving her village. Abena died when Akua was less than a year old, leaving Akua to be raised by the missionaries. Some time after that, Akua moved to the village Edweso. Now living with her husband and children, Akua was paranoid that her ear was growing, causing her to have terrible dreams about a woman made of fire and holding two little girls. This dream was likely sparked by Akua seeing a white man burned to death in Edweso.
When Akua woke from this dream screaming, as she often did, her husband argued with her, making her feel like he saw her as not fully Asante because of her upbringing. She decided not to tell him about her dreams anymore. Akua spent her days cooking and cleaning with her mother-in-law Nana Serwah and caring for her daughters Abee, who was four years old, and Ama Serwah, who was a toddler. Akua felt that Nana Serwah also did not approve of her because of her having been raised by white people. Akua liked walking to the market to get the food for dinner because she got away from the judging looks and thoughts of the women in the village. She would often stop at the place where a white man had been burned. The man had been dozing under a tree; when a child found him, he called out the word obroni which meant wicked man. Akua had first heard this word in reference to the missionary who raised her; she didn't know what it meant, so she had to be told by the fetish man who lived on the edge of town and gave her kola nuts. At that time, he told her that the missionary was indeed wicked, even if she thought him a man of god. Later, when the villagers burned the white man in Edweso, only Akua had understood his English when he tried to tell them that he was a traveler who meant them no harm.
When Akua got back to her compound, people were running around and shouting. Nana Serwah called her over to help cook food and explained that word had come that the British governor would not be returning the Asante king from exile. Not only this, but the governor wanted the Asante to give him the Golden Stool, which the Asante people saw as their spirit. By the next week, it was decided that the men would go off to fight. Some of the men tried to stay in the village, but Nana Serwah took out the machete that her late husband had left behind, and when the men saw that they left to join the fight as well.
Back in Akua's childhood, after Akua had first heard someone call the missionary obroni, the missionary decided that she should not go to school with the other children anymore. She had recently learned to write her English name, Deborah. The missionary told her that she and her mother were sinners and heathens. He told her that the African people would need to convert to Christianity and that they were lucky the British had come. Akua felt uncomfortable but agreed with him, afraid of a look she later realized had been one of hunger.
With the men gone off to fight, the women would rise early in the morning to march and sing in the streets. Akua led the pack because of her strong singing voice, and her young daughter Ama Serwah sometimes led with her. During the day, the women would cook and send the food to the men. At night, Akua had started to have dreams about fire and wake up screaming again.
Akua and Asamoah had met when he traveled to Kumasi to trade. Asamoah asked Akua to marry him just over two weeks after meeting her. Akua had not found him particularly handsome or intelligent, but she was excited to get away from the missionary. When she told the missionary about the proposal, he forbade it. Akua left anyway, indifferent to his cries that she and Asamoah were sinners.
Back in Edweso during the war, Akua started to obsessively stare into the fire when she was supposed to be cooking. She also realized that she was about six months pregnant. Nana Serwah decided that Akua should stay in her hut until she got better; Nana Serwah would look after Akua's two children. Akua started off thankful for the rest, but she began to dream of the firewoman. When Akua tried to leave her hut to see her children, she found that Nana Serwah had gotten a fat man from the village to hold it shut. Akua shouted for help, but soon could only huddle in the corner of the hut and pray aloud. She did this for an entire week.
The missionary tried to keep Akua from marrying Asamoah. In a final attempt to keep Akua from leaving, the missionary said he would tell her anything she wanted to know about her mother. He told her that her mother Abena wouldn't repent. When the missionary tried to baptize her in the river, he accidentally drowned her. When Akua asked what he did with the body, he told her that he burned it. He fell to the floor crying, and Akua left.
Asamoah returned to the village while Akua was still being kept in their hut. Asamoah made the fat man move and entered the hut, with his mother trailing behind. Akua saw that Asamoah had lost a leg. Asamoah told his mother to bring their daughters; one hugged him on the leg and the other lay down with her mother. Then Akua got up.
The war ended in September and was followed by a dry season. Akua and Asamoah had been uncomfortable when he first returned because of his missing leg. Akua had stopped sleeping through the night, but she knew that Asamoah hated to see her not sleeping, so she pretended. One night, Asamoah wanted to have sex with Akua; he spoke her name, and she thought about how people had started to call her Crazy Woman. After they finished, Asamoah cried and Akua slept peacefully. A few weeks later, Akua's son Yaw was born. As time went on, Akua started talking again, and she also started wandering while she slept. During the days, Akua would go on long walks with her children. They would usually walk by Yaa Asantewaa's old house and stop to rest beneath trees. One day, Akua talked to her daughters about people who have songs written about them and Abee said that she and her siblings wouldn't get a song because they were the children of a crazy woman. Akua wanted to discipline her daughter, but she was too tired. That night when Akua and the children got home, she ate with her husband and then the whole family went into the hut to sleep. Akua tried to sleep peacefully, imagining she was on a beach at Cape Coast. However, in the dream, a breeze came out of Akua's throat and turned into the firewoman. The firewoman told Akua to come out into the ocean, and she did, feeling her flesh burn. The firewoman led her to a place that looked like her hut; Akua saw that the firewoman had two fire children in her arms. They were crying, and Akua reached out to take them and burned her hands in the process. Still, she held the babies, happy to have finally found them, and the firewoman cried tears the color of ocean water that began to put out the fire.
Akua heard people shouting her name and woke to find that a group of men was carrying her above their heads. She was in great pain, and she saw that her hands and feet were badly burned. People were yelling curses at her, and Asamoah was following but lagging behind due to his missing leg. They tied Akua to a burning tree. She begged to know what had happened, and they told her that she had killed her children. Asamoah cried and told her that Yaw was still alive; Asamoah had only been able to save one child and had chosen him. Asamoah told them that he needed his wife to raise his son, and the villagers soon cut Akua down. When they got back to the hut, the doctor was examining Yaw. Nobody would tell Akua where Abee and Ama Serwah's bodies had been taken.
Analysis
Names have great importance in H's chapter. While earlier in the book, the importance of names largely centered around whether parents chose to give their child an Akan or Western name, the names in H's chapter largely serve to demonstrate or emphasize one's connections to one's parents. H does not have a real name, only a letter, since he never knew his parents. However, instead of giving himself a new name, he keeps this moniker as a symbol of the abrupt disconnect in his early life. Another character whose name signifies a connection to parents is Lil Joe, who must be referred to as such to differentiate him from his father Joecy. Interestingly, though H never knew his father's name, Kojo also went by the name Jo.
The importance of names is underscored by the drama between H and Ethe. Ethe found out that H was cheating on her when he called her another woman's name. Ethe even directly tells H how it was the act of being called the wrong name, not just being cheated on, that hurt her, saying, "Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name? Ain’t I deserve to be Ethe, to you at least, if nobody else? My mama gave me that name herself. I spent six good years with her before they sold me out to Louisiana to work them sugarcanes. All I had of her then was my name. That was all I had of myself too. And you wouldn’t even give me that" (p.186). Ethe's monologue reminds the reader how important names are to one's identity, especially as they relate to one's parents.
Though H never met his parents, and Kojo never met his either, H has a parallel moment that links him to his grandmother. This moment comes when H is in a bar talking to a woman and a man rips off his shirt to reveal scars from a whip. The people in the bar use this against H as evidence that he is an ex-con and, therefore, a bad or violent person. The reader knows that H was subjected to prison labor simply because he was black, and it is tragic to see this unjust system being further used against him, especially by other black people. This parallels Ness's memory from when she was not allowed to work as a house slave because of whip marks from punishment at an earlier plantation. As with H, the reader sympathizes with Ness, knowing she was only whipped for trying to claim her freedom and give her child a good life. Ness's memory also includes a black person not far from her social situation judging her for the whip marks; the fellow slave uses putting Ness down for her scars as a way to distance herself from Ness's experience.
The motif of fire is central to Akua's chapter. The fire motif can be traced through Effia's family line, starting with Maame setting a fire to escape on the night that Effia is born. From that time on, Effia's village thought she had an evil curse related to fire that would follow her and perhaps her children. It is not clear whether evil actually follows a family line or whether it is merely fear and superstition that is passed down through the generations. However, Akua's chapter seems to suggest that ancestors can directly visit their descendants, since later in Yaw's chapter, Akua talks about how the fire woman actually shared information with her about their family's history, information that Akua could not have otherwise known. This means that in Marjorie's chapter, even later in the book, when the girl grapples with her fear of fire, she is actually grappling with her place in relation to her ancestors.
Gyasi alludes in Akua's chapter to a historical Asante song about a woman who was a leader in the War of the Golden Stool. The song, which Gyasi quotes in full in the text, goes "Koo koo hin koo/ Yaa Asantewaa ee!/ Obaa basia/ Ogyina apremo ano ee!/ Waye be egyae/ Na Wabo Mmoden" (p.204). According to Oxford Reference, this translates roughly to "Yaa Asantewaa. The woman who fights before cannons. You have accomplished great things. You have done well." Using a historical song, especially without giving a translation, ties Gyasi's fiction to real events and people in Ghana's history and encourages the reader to look further into this history. Gyasi also likely feels a special connection to this leader and songs commemorating her life because of their shared first name.
