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Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route | 
 enlarge | Author: Saidiya Hartman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $7.99
You Save: $6.01 (43%)
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 88665
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0374531153
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.36209667
EAN: 9780374531157
ASIN: 0374531153
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history.The slave, Hartman observes, is a stranger—torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartman’s lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade. Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a “landmark text” (Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Roots 2.0 January 17, 2007
Robert W. Kellemen (Crown Point, IN United States)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
What "Roots" was to the Boomer Generation, "Lose Your Mother" could and should be to the Generation Next. Saidiay Hartman's writing styles fits perfectly for a generation that longs for and loves narrative, story, and first-hand journal accounts.
However, no one should thus assume that Hartman's writing lacks research credibility for she brilliantly weaves both rousing narrative and copious research to portray a powerful picture of one of history's ugliest stories: Middle Passage. She provides a fresh account of ancient wounds.
Hartman's book can and should make a renewed contribution to the healing of past hurts which still linger deep. Her passionate style and scholarly depth can help a nation move beyond suffering to healing hope.
Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.
Brilliant! January 18, 2007
T. Schrider
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
Lose Your Mother is a story that weaves geneology with African American history. It's intimate and powerful, touching and complex. Universally connecting, it is a story of alienation and hope.
Spectacular March 25, 2007
Murray S (Columbia, MD)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Saidiya Hartman takes us on a journey that is intense, tough and thoroughly rewarding. Impressively, she learned as much about herself as she did about the past she sought, even more.
The beauty of going with her on this journey is that the reader has the same magnificent opportunity, hypnotically led by the author, to ponder and to gain personal insight perhaps too long submerged.
Extraordinarily Insightful and Eloquent July 22, 2007
John E. Pepper (Cincinnati, OH USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A deeply moving combination of history, personal memoir and deep reflection,particularly on the heroic and aspirational legacy of slavery as seen by this wonderful writer.
 Forced to read it..... boring. August 18, 2008
Miles Wilcox (Great Barrington, MA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had to read it for college, and honestly, it was quite redundant. I can summarize it in one sentence:
"They did not accept me when I went to Africa to find my family."
Chapter after chapter go on and on about how lonely she feels in Africa, which seems obvious to me because she has nothing in common with Africans besides her skin color. If I go out and buy a tub of paint and change my skin color, will I have anything in common with her? No. They grew up on different sides of the planet, with totally different governments, economic situations, weather conditions, and culture. What she was searching for was family, and she didn't find it in Africa. Skin color doesn't equate familiarity or a connection.
As Whoopi Goldberg said, I am not African-American. I did not live in Africa, I wasn't born there, I visited there, once, but I am as American as anyone else.
That being said, I'm sure she is a nice lady.
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