From enslavement to selfhood: Negotiating identity across borders in Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name
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This study explores the negotiation of the identity performed by the main character in the novel Someone Knows My Name. It portrays the journey from enslavement to selfhood, illustrating profoundly impacts black people's views on identity and belonging. This study examines Lawrence Hill's "Someone Knows My Name" as a cross-border narrative by tracing Aminata Diallo's journey from Mali (Africa) to America, Canada, Sierra Leone (Africa), and England. Her journey shapes her identities and marks her transition from being enslaved to becoming herself. Drawing on Stuart Hall's ideas on cultural identity and Paul Gilroy's concept of the Black Atlantic, this study found that identity in the novel is not fixed but reconstructed through movement, memory, and resistance. Aminata's experiences with forced migration, renaming, and marginalization fragment her identity. However, her strength and narrative voice demonstrate her ability to reclaim agency and self-definition. The novel's scope reflects Gilroy's Black Atlantic, where identity develops through cultural, historical, and geographical exchanges. Ultimately, "Someone Knows My Name" presents identity as a flexible, changing concept shaped by trauma, movement, and the human desire for freedom and belonging
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