When someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest in the water, thinking their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. But still, Yaw, you have to let yourself be free.

She has spent the night hidden in the left corner of the room, watching this man she’s been told is her husband become the animal he’s been told that he is.

We can't go back can we?" She stopped walking and touched his arm. She looked more serious than she had all night, like she was only just considering that he was a real person and not someone she had dreamed up when he found her asleep. "We can't go back to something we ain't never been to in the first place. It ain't ours anymore. This is." She swept her hand in front of her, as though she were trying to catch all of Harlem in it, all of New York, all of America.

Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind.

There's a castle on the coast of Fanteland called the Cape Coast Castle. That is where they used to keep the slaves before they sent them away, to Aburokyire: America, Jamaica. Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewa, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were... we all are.

Since moving to the Castle, she'd discovered that only the white men talked of "black magic." As though magic had a color.

Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewe, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or the Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were... we all are.

Tu veux savoir ce qu'est la faiblesse ? C'est de traiter quelqu'un comme s'il t'appartenait. La force est de savoir qu'il n'appartient qu'à lui-même.

We someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.