The Door Of No Return by William St Clair is a historical novel about the infamous Cape Coast Castle, the center of the transatlantic slave trade situated on the west coast of Ghana. It was very interesting to learn about the technical aspects of the castle and its history, but I feel as though many parts were left out. The details accounted for were incredible, but there was no real human contact within the book, and therefore no emotion tied to it. There was really no chance to get to learn about the most important part of the castle: the people who lived inside its walls.
However i do think its extremely important to get to know this fascinating building because it serves as one of the most important buildings in African slave history. Therefore i think that a book pertaining to this subject should definitely be on the list, but maybe one thats a bit more anecdotal.
-Michelle Obama
I was thinking of choosing this book to read. I am pretty interested in the slave trade and the bringing of slaves world wide. It seems like a good read.
ReplyDelete-Confucius
I completely agree. There's almost no accounting for the people whose lives were destroyed by the slave trade. St. Clair seems pretty interested in learning only about the Europeans who worked there.
ReplyDeleteThere were some books on the list that were more directly related to trans-Atlantic slavery, but no one picked them. I don't know why. A number of them were older books, so they didn't have the cool artwork & titles of the more recent books. Maybe that's it.
Did the book contrast with anything you learned this summer?
-Mrs. McCabe