If you
took a trip back to slavery plantation life, would you be a changed person when
you returned to your life today? Would you be able to survive the harsh
realities of existing as a person with no liberties to manifest your soul? Who
is Sambo? by Stephen Mackey is a book on lessons that answer
these very questions. The lessons that make one remember a time past when life
for the African enslaved in America experienced a life of misery and of hope. This
is a typical story of time travel from the 20th century to the 19th
century in a small metropolis in Texas of a group of seven African Americans
from all walks of life. The cultural revolutionary, the corporate climb the
ladder brother, the “I got mine” independent women, the celebrity basketball
player, a homey in the rap game, the prosperity preaching minister and a single
mom doing whatever she “gotta” do in the music scene to feed her two babies all
involuntarily find themselves dressed in rags, living in wood shacks and
talking like a slave! They are transported back to slavery time, literally in
their ancestors shoes on a plantation of a well to do family whose descendants
chose to hide their history of slave ownership. Still in the 20th
century mind frame, this group has to figure out a way to survive the everyday
life as a slave with a big grizzly overseer and the perverted lifestyle of the
slave owners. And you know somebody got to get whipped.
The style
of writing is simplistic in that it would make a great read for those who are
new to learning about slavery or as an introduction to honoring lessons from
the ancestors through the connection everyone has to their past life times. The
author Stephen Mackey interweaves an array of cultural norms that when recognized
brings a smile to the heart and the added humor blends well with the grim
reality of a life past that still has its effects in the present.
This
book would set well in the minds of young readers. It has some bling aspects of
celebrity life that many look up to now and it opens the mind to a reality of a
past and future decisions that they too one day will have to face in their own
time when they make the connection to their past. The transitions are slow and
typical however they lead to moments of intrigue. There are also some undeveloped
moments in the writing that could have added so much more to the text. Such as
the story of the one European character that was transported back with the
group and what the characters experienced individually as they went there separate
ways on the plantation going about their “normal” life.
As a
first time self published piece, Who Is Sambo, has the potential to raise a
much needed awareness of how embracing the lessons of the ancestors and knowing
their stories can help us today to build good character among ourselves based
on a time in our history where our good character and care for each other was
all Africans enslaved in America had to survive life.
Dr. Akua Gray
December 1, 2013
Houston, Texas
No comments:
Post a Comment