Post #4 "And my story waits like a restful beast"

In Thursday's class, we discussed the chapter one of the book two named "And my story waits like a restful beast". This story happened in London in the year of 2013. She was about 60 years old. She sat with the abolitionists who called Aminata their equal.  The abolitionists are a group of English men who want to end African slave trade and sent slaves free. Aminata wanted to tell her story to them. But they just want to listen something offensive about slave ship. Aminata was tired of that. She thought the meaning of her life is to tell the story, according to the last sentence in this chapter, “One of these people will find my story and pass it along, and then, I believe, I will lived for a reason"(Lawrence 118).  She was unsatisfied with abolitionists' neglect about her story. "The abolitionists may well call me their equal, but their lips do not yet say my name and their ears do not yet hear my story...this is my name. This is who I am. This is how I got here. In the absence of an audience, I will write down my story so that it waits like a restful beast with lungs breathing and heart beating."(P116)  She shows her sadness and anger in simile, comparing a restful beast to the emotion that she could not wait to tell the story.  It is like an extinct volcano. Once it blows, it will release all the energy and come to the death, realizing the meaning of its life. This is also shown in the chapters before. “No, I told myself. Be a djeli, see and remember.” (P74) It explains and emphaize the meaning of title of this chapter “ And my story waits like a restful beast.”

The reason that author change the time from the past to the present might be that he wants to hyperbole the three flashbacks in three books make a perfect connection between each one. The story would ends by the last flashback. It also makes us like we are listening to djeji to tell story by herself and we could understand more about her behaviors in the past.