One of the benefits of rolling the media clerk’s position into mine is that I get to work with the new books when they come in. Typically, when processing them, I’m able to fight the urge to sit and read for a 5, 10 or 20 minutes. (No, librarians don’t sit and read all day!) Today rolled out so slowly and quietly that before I knew it, I found myself in the midst of a book. I did what’s called ‘cracking the book’: just opening to a random page and beginning to read.

Fa means father in my language. Ba means river. It also means mother. In my early childhood, my ba was like a river, flowing on and on and on with me through the days, and keeping me safe at night. Most of my lifetime has come and gone, but I still think of them as my parents, older and wiser than I, and still hear their voices, sometimes deep-chested, at other moments floating like musical notes. I imagine their hands steering me from trouble, guiding me around cooking fires and leading me to the mat in the cool shade of our home. I can still picture my father with a sharp stick over hard earth, scratching out Arabic in flowing lines and speaking of the distant Timbuktu.

While the reader may not know that Timbuktu was an important Islamic educational center located in northern Africa, the richness of this culture is evident even in this short reading. These are the thoughts of Aminate Diallo, an enslaved African who tells a story spanning six decades and much of the North American continent. This woman, enslaved though she may be is a thoughtful, thought-filled human being!

Lawrence Hill, a Canadian, is the author of this 470  page novel, Someone Knows My Name.

First line: I seem to have trouble dying.