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Brave Music of a Distant Drum

Name: Brave Music of a Distant Drum
Author: Manu Herbstein
ISBN: 9780889954700

by Manu Herbstein

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Overview

In Brave Music of a Distant Drum, a blind old slave woman, Ama, summons her son to come and write down her story so that her granddaughter and her granddaughter's children can one day read it and know their history.

Ama's son, Kwame Zumbi - named Zacharias Williams by the white Christians who raised him - considers his mother an old pagan and has little interest in doing more than is necessary to fulfill his obligation to her. How he is changed by the acts of hearing and writing down the details of his mother's story is as powerful and important a story as Ama's.

The story of an African enslaved in Brazil, Ama's story is violent - it includes murder, rape, and betrayal - and yet is is also a story of hope, courage, determination and love.

Synopsis

Ama's son, Kwame Zumbi - named Zacharias Williams by the white Christians who raised him - considers her an ugly old pagan and has little interest in doing more than is necessary to fulfill his obligation to her. How he is changed by the acts of hearing and writing down the details of his mother's story is as powerful and important a story as Ama's.

The story of an African enslaved in Brazil, Ama's story is violent - it includes murder, rape, and betrayal - and yet it is also a story of courage, hope, determination, and love.

About the Author, Manu Herbstein

Manu Herbstein is the author of Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade which won the 2002 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for best first book. He lives in Ghana.

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Editorials

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—This novel portrays the difficult and heroic life of a slave from her capture in Africa to her horrifying journey across the Atlantic and her life on a European plantation in Brazil. Elderly, nearly blind, and dying, Ama has led both a privileged and a tormented life, and she wishes to record her life story for her estranged son, Zacharias, who naively believes that his important position will be his ticket out of slavery. He is a clerk and scribe for the Consul of the United Kingdom and arrogantly expects the promise of his freedom to be fulfilled by the wife of his employer. Summoned to his mother's deathbed, he learns the truth about their family history. By the end of his visit, mother and son come to understand each other, and Zacharias resolves to pass on his mother's story to his daughter. Though this edition of the adult novel Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (E-reads, 2000) has been toned down for young adult audiences, the author does not shy away from realism, gruesomeness, and candor, including graphic portrayals of rape, beatings, and other atrocities. The story unfolds from alternating perspectives with Ama narrating most of the book. An insightful and, at times, heartbreaking read.—Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI

Kirkus Reviews

Clearly still aiming to shock, Herbstein recasts but does not tone down his debut novel, originally published for adult audiences as Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (2001). Punctuating her narrative with rapes (some of which are explicitly described) and other atrocities, from forced cannibalism to a flogging that leaves her scarred and one-eyed, blind old Ama relates her life's hard story to her increasingly disturbed son Zacharias. He, though still enslaved, had been raised in a white official's household and forced to suppress memories of his earliest years on the Bahian engenho (sugar plantation). Writing in terse, simple language, the Ghana-born author zigzags between points of view--injecting notes of irony (the slave ship that carries Ama to Brazil is named The Love of Liberty, for instance) and acidly matter-of-fact indictments of the brutality and hypocrisy of white slaveholding Christians. Callously ordered away just as his mother is dying, by the end Zacharias sheds his self-righteous naiveté, returns to calling himself by his birth name Kwame Zumbi and vows to share his true heritage with his own young daughter. Readers will be moved as much by Ama's intelligence and unwavering sense of self respect as by her hideous experiences. The agenda is never less than obvious, but it's a powerful tale nonetheless. (map, cast list, glossary) (Historical fiction. 15 & up)