The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone

by Iyunolu Folayan Osagie

Overview

From journalism and lectures to drama, visual art, and the Spielberg film, this study ranges across the varied cultural reactions—in America and Sierra Leone—engendered by the 1839 Amistad slave ship revolt.

Iyunolu Folayan Osagie is a native of Sierra Leone, from where the Amistad's cargo of slaves originated. She digs deeply into the Amistad story to show the historical and contemporary relevance of the incident and its subsequent trials. At the same time, she shows how the incident has contributed to the construction of national and cultural identity both in Africa and the African diasporo in America—though in intriguingly different ways.

This pioneering work of comparative African and American cultural criticism shows how creative arts have both confirmed and fostered the significance of the Amistad revolt in contemporary racial discourse and in the collective memories of both countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820324654
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	01/06/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

IYUNOLU FOLAYAN OSAGIE is an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.

IYUNOLU FOLAYAN OSAGIE is an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part One. Remembering the Past
Chapter 1. The Amistad Story in the American Context
Chapter 2. Slave Revolts and the Production of Identity
Chapter 3. The Amistad Returnees and the Mende Mission

Part Two. Reinventing the Present
Chapter 4. Sculpting History: African American Burdens of Memory
Chapter 5. National Identity: The Dramatic Return of Memory in Sierra Leone
Chapter 6. Hollywood Images, African Memories: Spielberg's Amistad and Sierra Leone Culture and Politics

Afterword
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

Using the Amistad revolt and the vast body of intellectual and artistic production that it has generated as point of departure, The Amistad Revolt explores such diverse disciplines as history, fiction, drama and film to stage a comparative exploration of the production of identity in Africa and the U.S. African-American diaspora.

Cornell University - Biodun Jeyifo

Broadens the scope of the Amistad story and re-examines its significance on both sides of the Atlantic . . . Its enormous contribution to African Diaspora and African Studies will prove invaluable to those seeking to come to terms with these still largely understudied areas. In all cases, Osagie's work forces its readers to confront African humanity and to dialogue with its myriad internal and external contradictions and possibilities.

African American Review

Osagie refutes certain preconceived notions and theories about the Amistad revolt. . . . and explores specific connections between the United States and what she has seen in her native Sierra Leone.

West Africa

Stephen Spielberg's 1997 movie Amistad, a 'colonialist reenactment,' stands at the intellectual center of this extended essay on the cultural impact of the 1839 revolt by Mende slaves on a Cuban ship. . . . Osagie is Sierra Leonean and only learned of this heroic event of the slave era in 1993. Because Africans have known so little of this story, he sees its 're-memory' as a vital part of contemporary nation building on the continent.

Choice

The achievement of Osagie's pivotal work is its contribution to filling the divide of ignorance between Continental and Diaspora academics with information about the ravages perpetrated on Sierra Leone, and the reconstruction of identity undertaken there, while the descendants of Africa's other dispersed captives have attempted rebellion, survival, and self-definition in the face of their own accumulations of genocidal levels of trauma.

The Griot

"Using the Amistad revolt and the vast body of intellectual and artistic production that it has generated as point of departure, The Amistad Revolt explores such diverse disciplines as history, fiction, drama and film to stage a comparative exploration of the production of identity in Africa and the U.S. African-American diaspora."--Biodun Jeyifo, Cornell University

"Osagie refutes certain preconceived notions and theories about the Amistad revolt. . . . and explores specific connections between the United States and what she has seen in her native Sierra Leone.--West Africa

"Stephen Spielberg's 1997 movie Amistad, a 'colonialist reenactment,' stands at the intellectual center of this extended essay on the cultural impact of the 1839 revolt by Mende slaves on a Cuban ship. . . . Osagie is Sierra Leonean and only learned of this heroic event of the slave era in 1993. Because Africans have known so little of this story, he sees its 're-memory' as a vital part of contemporary nation building on the continent."--Choice

"Broadens the scope of the Amistad story and re-examines its significance on both sides of the Atlantic . . . Its enormous contribution to African Diaspora and African Studies will prove invaluable to those seeking to come to terms with these still largely understudied areas. In all cases, Osagie's work forces its readers to confront African humanity and to dialogue with its myriad internal and external contradictions and possibilities."--African American Review

"The achievement of Osagie's pivotal work is its contribution to filling the divide of ignorance between Continental and Diaspora academics with information about the ravages perpetrated on Sierra Leone, and the reconstruction of identity undertaken there, while the descendants of Africa's other dispersed captives have attempted rebellion, survival, and self-definition in the face of their own accumulations of genocidal levels of trauma."--The Griot

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