Dutch Group Burns Cover of the Novel “The Book of Negroes”

On June 22, the Dutch group Federation for Honour and Reparation of Slavery in Surinam burned the cover of the award winning novel, The Book of Negroes written by Lawrence Hill.

The group’s leader Roy Groenberg sent a letter to Hill stating that the word “Negro” is offensive to the descendants of slavery. The Dutch translation is Het Negerboek.

Hill’s response reported in the CBC News explains that he is speaking of a time in history when Black men and women were listed in a ledger by the British at the time of the Revolutionary War.

“I have found that when given the opportunity to see what I am doing in this book and with this title, readers understand that the title is not intended to be offensive, but that it is used historically, to shed light on a forgotten document and on a forgotten migration (that of thousands of Blacks from the USA to Canada in 1783),” he said in a letter to Groenberg.

However because of the sensitivity other countries have chosen to change the title . In the USA, Austrailia and New Zealand the title is Someone Knows My Name and in Quebec it is called Aminata.

Read Hill’s response in full in the Toronto Star