My struggle to tell this African story, to create this artwork as well as live creatively under any conditions and survive, as my ancestors did, embodies my particular heritage in this world. It really is a special time and this book encourages the reader to not only celebrate the g I picked this book up shortly after finishing another Hollis book called. I have finished this long psychological and spiritual journey back in order to move forward with the completion of the last painting of the Middle Passage - story that has changed me forever. In his autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the former slave Equiano writes of his journey on the Middle Passage: “Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much happier than myself.” In Gem of the Ocean, those inhabitants of the deep have built the City of Bones, an underwater kingdom where they continue to live, not merely rest in peace. European slave traders brought Africans to the New World on ships as early as the 1400s. 'The Middle Passage' examines many of the same concepts but focuses more on that time in our life when we seem to seek meaning with greater desperation than when we were younger. It is estimated that ten to fifteen percent of the Africans brought over on these ships perished. In this harrowing description of the Middle Passage, Olaudah Equiano described the terror of the transatlantic slave trade. Others mounted failed insurrections against those who held them in bondage, and were put to death. Many more chose to jump overboard they considered drowning preferable to the voyage’s harsh, agonizing and unpredictable conditions, and the uncertain future that lay ahead. Those who didn’t perish outright from sickness ran the risk of being thrown overboard to prevent further spread of the disease.
![middle passage middle passage](https://www.nps.gov/articles/images/800px-Detailed_Triangle_Trade_1.jpg)
There were breakouts of smallpox and yellow fever, and other illnesses such as dysentery were very common. On average each ship carried 400 slaves, who were shackled-often to one another-and made to stay in spaces below deck that were less than five feet high, packed so closely together that one observer said they looked “like books on a shelf…so close that the shelf would not easily contain one more.Īs a result, disease was prevalent. The living conditions on the ships that carried millions of African men, women and children across the water were extremely poor. Historians refer to the transport of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean as the Middle Passage because it was the middle leg of the trade. European goods such as copper, cloth and guns were traded in African markets for African slaves, who were sent to the Americas and traded for raw materials such as sugar, rum and tobacco that were sent back to Europe. The Atlantic slave trade was the most famous example of a triangular trade system.