Lose Your Mother
A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
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Lose Your Mother
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Narrated by:
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Allyson Johnson
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By:
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Saidiya Hartman
About this listen
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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In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile.
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skip the introduction!
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What listeners say about Lose Your Mother
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- L.A.
- 01-25-22
A Generous Journey
Saidiya Hartman unravels complex histories, challenging memories, and desires for freedom, for another social order. Her account is relatable, onerous, vulnerable, and generous as it takes the reader to many places and time periods. Beautiful written, this amazing blend of poignant memoir and informative historical text is a must read/listen to for everyone, who studies slavery, racism, colonialism, and memory.
Regarding the performance- Great narrator as well. I especially appreciated the altered voices to designate speakers.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- eric lewis
- 02-19-24
Outstanding!!
This book is everything! So powerfully relevant and meaningful. My wife and I hope to visit Ghana soon and this is the exact perspective I need to have. Every no and then you get this feeling, when reading, that you’re engaged with a very special work. It’s such an important work, that I’m going grab a physical copy and slowly work my way through it, again. And the narrator was perfect!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ohene
- 12-14-23
Beautiful story, with depth and meaning
This is a wonderful account of person, trying to find herself in the world. My only issue was with the narrators attempt at a Ghanaian accent lol im a Ghanaian man, and let me tell you that was not it. It was more akin to a weak Caribbean accent. Other than that the story was brilliant!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Zsudayka Terrell
- 12-13-23
Amazing way to take on a complicated subject
I super enjoyed how this book really dug into the history of slavery as it was a practice in Ghana. It really set some foundation to the experience that they are having versus the experience that we are having in America. Amazing summed up the sense of searching for something that possibly will never found. Inspired me to create really introspective artwork around similar themes.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- A. SAID
- 10-27-21
A great book.
The narrator is excellent except while reciting in the various accents she tried. This does not take away from this very important story/book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sasha
- 03-02-23
Great Discourse
Great mixture of ethnography and theory for Black Studies. Forces the reading to think if they should “lose their mother”. Also a fan of the reader!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- M. Hurst
- 04-26-22
depressing and too wordy,
depressing and wordy, too picturesque for such good data. hard to listen to, despite great amount of data
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