#eventually sells his own daughter into slavery to pay for more food

[9-long-years]

Lol is Lila going to go into someone's house to pretend to be their grandma?

new ancient kwami dropped !!! hes so cute and non threatening pls pls pls wear his miraculous hell be sooooooooooo sweet

[moonlitgleek]

"[Arya and Sansa] actually have a bit in common in terms of the skills they are picking up from their individual journeys" Can you please expand on that? I'd love to read more about their parallels!

I’ll speak to the parallels that I was thinking of when I wrote that, but I’m afraid this is not going to be comprehensive because it’s been a while since I read the books. I might come back to it later when I have the chance to do a reread.

Adapting to their surroundings and managing their image

Both Arya and Sansa have a penchant for adapting which develops from an intuitive reaction to a conscious effort that plays on managing people’s perception of them. Sansa approaches it through the medium of a lady’s education; she instinctively employs her socially-approved image as a proper lady and her courtesies to try and sway the court in her favor when she delivers her plea for Ned’s life, then consciously and carefully modifies her mannerisms and her wardrobe to reflect the persona she wants to convince others of as she shifts from playing Joffrey’s dedicated royal betrothed to Littlefinger’s daughter-slash-mentee to the bastard girl the Vale lords think her to be. She takes care of how to present herself to various factions and leans into people’s perception of her as unthreatening and naive to achieve her goals. Who would think that little Sansa was planning her escape in the godswood? Who would pay much attention to the unassuming bastard girl?

Arya also leans into people’s mistaken perceptions of her. She is repeatedly mistaken for a boy which she eventually uses to conceal her true identity and evade capture. We see her high awareness of how to behave while with Yoren to pass as a boy and is conscious of how her dirty appearance at Harrenhal sells her false identity as a peasant and tries to behave accordingly. She learns to be conscious of her mannerisms in the House of Black and White to adapt to the identities she slips between. In fact, one of the main things Arya is taught during her time in Braavos is how to adapt to her surroundings and adjust everything else down to her body language and facial expressions to take on a new persona and she is very adept at it. She has also repeatedly uses the fact that people underestimate her because of her size or her gender to get close enough to do what she wants, whether that’s to get information or to launch an attack as she did with the weasel soup.

That’s three skills the girls are getting better at: learning to adapt, learning how to use self-presentation to support an endeavor or alter perception, and learning how to deliberately play on others’ expectations to accomplish your goal. All of which are extremely handy in political situations.

Experiencing the life of the disadvantaged

The experiences that Sansa and Arya go through in their individual journeys are sure to inform the political philosophy of both girls. As we’ve seen with the example of Aegon V and his pro-smallfolk reforms, a life among the lower social classes can have a significant effect on policy. Aegon V lived with the commoners over the course of his squiring for Ser Duncan the Tall which made him more attuned to the needs and struggles of a social class that often goes ignored by the high lords. Daenerys’ powerlessness and harsh life similarly informs her anti-slavery campaign in Slaver’s Bay.

In the same vein, Sansa and Arya’s arcs in the aftermath of Ned’s death leads them to live the life of the disadvantaged in a way that could only elevate their natural compassion. The girls are innately kind, and Arya in particular has always been sensitive to injustices inflicted on the weak, but it remains that the girls start the series with a great deal of privilege as the daughters of a great lord who, despite his own compassionate nature, doesn’t really know what it is to live a disenfranchised or unprivileged life. That Sansa experiences the prejudiced attitude leveled at bastards and Arya shares in the hardships the smallfolk go through could only bolster their innate kindness in having them able to empathize with the plight of those who suffer from the class hierarchy that tramples the weak in the game of thrones. The degree of separation that the girls had before gets degraded to an extent. They struggle through those hardships and prejudices, through the cruelty and apathy of the noble class towards a population they don’t see as valuable enough. That can only make Sansa and Arya mindful of how their decisions reflect on those below them in the social ladder when they are the ones in charge and enable them to be a source of change to the social attitude towards lower classes.

A similar effect would result from how the girls went through experiences that showed themthe horrors of war. Arya travels through the Riverlands and sees how war, even just and righteous ones, ravishes the people and exacts a toll on the commoners first and foremost. She sees the destruction and the misery Robb’s troops inflict on innocents in a similar way to the Lannisters’. Sansa lives the reality of being a political hostage and what it really means to have your life hanging on the balance. While the Lannisters push and break the boundaries of acceptable practices as always, holding hostages against the good behavior of their family on the threat of death remains an acceptable political tool that everyone freely partakes in. It is also a fundamentally unjust practice that inflicts harm on people for the actions of their kin. The Starklings have all grown up with Theon suffering from that perilous position but none of them really understood it. That builds an awareness of the consequences of these accepted political practice and puts the human side of the game of thrones firmly on their minds.

Leadership skills

The arcs of the Starks girls, different as they get, keep circling back to how they personify an ideology that implanted the Starks into the very history of the North. Despite not being in power the way characters like Jon or Dany are in their own leadership roles, the girls find themselves in spaces that allows them to understand power, whether as a duty or a privilege, and build their own leadership model. The thing to note is that the Stark girls understand that leadership is a duty of protection and care. So it’s not just that Sansa saves Dontos Hollard or talks Joffrey into giving that poor Kingslander with the dead baby money instead of running her down, it’s not just that Arya fiercely pursues justice for those victimized by the Lannisters from Mycah to Ned to Lanna to Lomy; it’s that the girls understand that that leadership is a responsibility. Sansa correctly identifies that ruling through love through easing the suffering of people is the correct principle and considers it a main part of royal role.Arya steps in for her family taking on the role of the Stark in Winterfell when she metes out justice to Daeron in the name of the Starks. Both girls reflect their father’s ideology and teachings, with Arya directly invoking Ned’s leadership lessons to Robb and Jon.

As the story progresses, the girls get more instances where they step up to take charge in time of need. Arya emerges as a natural leader during the attack on Yoren’s group and tries her best to steer her little newfound pack away from danger. She plots with Jaqen to free the Northmen and refuses to leave Gendy and Hot Pie behind when she flees Harrenhal. She takes Weasel under her wing and is very protective of her. Being caring and protective has always been in Arya’s nature but we see her growing awareness of the unfairness of the world and her determination to push back. This is the girl who stepped in between Joffrey and Mycah and was literally the only person who cares about justice for Mycah after all. Justice is a major concern for Arya, but she also clearly understands that justice has to be tempered with mercy as shown in her reaction to the Karstark men dying in crow cages.

Where Arya leans more towards the protector role, Sansa leans towards the providing aspect of leadership. She is associated with the wish to provide foodstuff to the starving population of King’s Landing, with successfully getting Joffrey to give money, with giving comfort to the terrified women during the Blackwater, with helping Lancel and calling for medical attention. Her more traditional feminine skills like sewing and running the household has always been cited as majorly important skills to surviving in winter. Sansa’s story associates her with relief efforts which she is positioned to do as winter kicks in with a vengeance considering that Littlefinger is currently hoarding food up in the Vale. I’m quite invested in the theory that she’ll be the one to hold Winterfell during the thick of the War for the Dawn as the castle becomes a refuge for those fleeing winter and the Others. I think both girls will embody the historical roles of the Starks in that war, with Arya protecting the North with her wolf pack and Sansa comforting and taking care of the civilians inside the castle.

Political analysis and deduction skills

The girls are each developing a mind for political analysis that is being bolstered by the crash course they are receiving in the Vale and the House of Black and White respectively, under mentors who actively encourage them to hone their observation skills and connect the dots to a larger picture.

Sansa’s skill shows when she starts looking closer at her maids in the aftermath of Ned’s death and concludes that they are spying on her for Cersei. Her affinity for political analysis shows itself when she thinks over what Margaery’s betrothal to Joffrey and Loras’ appointment to the Kingsguard mean in light of Joff’s temperament, unknowingly putting her finger on the design of the Purple Wedding. In the aftermath of the wedding, she connects the missing amethyst in her hairnet and Dontos’ insistence that she wears it to the wedding to Joffrey’s murder, a fact Littlefinger confirms later. She also figures out that Petyr framed Tyrion from the information that he was the one who arranged for the jousting dwarves. In the Vale, Sansa understands the significance of Petyr’s act in granting Nestor Royce the Gates of the Moon as a political play, and pays close attention to the Lords Declarant upon their arrival in the Eyrie, noting the purpose behind the seating arrangements and deducing that Lyn Corbray is working with Littlefinger. Her training montage with Littlefinger includes lessons her about inheritance, the intricacies of social interactions and the interpersonal dynamics of Vale nobility which is immensely valuable in a political setting. Sansa is also basically running the Eyrie right now and her idea about the tourney of the Winged Knights and organizational skills shows budding political skill.

Meanwhile, Arya is developing a knack for gathering information from multiple sources and how to separate hard facts from her own deductions. She has always been good at listening and her underfoot tendencies gave her access to a lot of important information ahead of time, even if she does not always realize their importance in the moment. From the plotting of Varys and Illyrio to the design of the Red Wedding, Arya gets bits and pieces about some rather significant events. Syrio Forel hones her skills by teaching her to be fast and silent, to look closely and observe carefully which Arya consciously employs across her arc, most notably when she sees the guards in grey cloaks waiting by the Wind Witch and figures out that they are not her father’s men. The kindly man only bolsters Arya’s perceptiveness by forcing her to rely on her other senses and furthers her awareness of body language and facial expressions, both her own and other people’s, which helps her see through people’s lies and also sell her own lies capably. The kindly man also encourages Arya further to observe and listen once in Braavos by asking her to learn three new things every day, and the things Arya bring ranges from mundane (jabes, riddles) to important politically (sailor’s tales about the war in Slaver’s Bay and Dany’s dragons) and economically (”tricks of this trade or the other”).

On top of that, Arya’s time in Braavos exposes her to adifferent culture, ruling model and political atmosphere, which she we see her use to build a growing understanding of the politics of Bravoos and how it compares to that of Westeros. Her political ability shines through when she uses the data she gathered to deduce that the death of the current ill Sealord will bring a conflict and assassinations till a new one, who she identifies as Tormo Fregar, comes out on top. Arya’s knack of making friends with any and everyone, whether highborn and lowborn, Westeros native or not, means she is quite capable of building a huge network of relationships and diverse sources of information.

Parallels also exist in the way Sansa and Arya are both learning to recognize cues that they are being played or lied to. To slip between personas as befits their circumstances but without losing the core of their identity. They are gaining a lot of knowledge about political intrigue and learning the tools of diplomatic relations. The methods and the aspects of their training montages may differ, but I don’t think the skills they are each acquiring are all that divergent. In fact, I think the girls’ skills are rather complementary, and they are each meant to enhance and round off the other’s skillset.

[sunken-standard]

“Fanfic Asks”: number 9 and 19, please!))

From this ask meme.

9. Fake dating or arranged marriage? 

Fake dating all the way.  Arranged marriage just doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for me most of the time because I can’t get over being a feminist killjoy.  It’s one of those things I want to like, but when I think about the bleak reality of it and the hell it was and still is for the women forced into one, I personally can’t divorce myself from my anger enough to enjoy it. 

I mean, there are exceptions; forced marriage with both parties consenting is just the softer equivalent of the ‘fuck-or-die’ trope, which I’m actually a fan of in some contexts (more magical/ fantasy or sex pollen set-ups, not a voyeur threatening murder kind of thing).  Like, if someone told me that an arranged marriage was a theme early on in Outlander, I would have given it a hard pass, but the way it was written and the characters’ relationship was already there, so it wasn’t the same as like, ‘irresponsible and greedy father sells barely-legal daughter into reproductive slavery,’ y’know?  That’s the kind of thing that just turns me off, and that goes for both het and slash (and man, you would not believe how often it happens in certain slash fandoms, even outside of Omegaverse settings–ancient traditions, uniting kingdoms, yada yada, I’m lookin’ at you, Merlin).

19. What’s your favorite character headcanon? 

Oooh… this is tough, because I have a lot.  Virgin Sherlock is a perennial, but I talk about that all the time.  So here’s a small headcanon for each of the main characters, in no particular order:

(behind a cut because LONG)

Mrs. Hudson: is still laundering cartel money through Speedy’s, some twenty years on after getting out of the life.  She knows more about shell corporations and offshore accounting than the Koch brothers.

Mycroft: The eating disorder.  He’s under enormous pressure at work and from his family and he was a fat kid, of course he’s going to channel his control issues into food. 

Sally: Grew up in Brixton and is so fucking tired of the ‘poor black girl from the council estate who made something of herself’ narrative; she comes from a long line of successful musicians.  Her grandfather made ska records and owned a corner shop that later became a record shop and her dad is still doing session work.  She’s the oddball for becoming a cop.

Greg: is still really heartbroken over his divorce.  His wife was his first love and he knows it’s his fault the marriage disintegrated, but his job gives him purpose and ultimately, he needed that more than he needed his wife.

Wiggins: near-genius level IQ, but his potential was never tapped because the class system is just as vicious as it’s always been, coupled with a truly shitty home life.  He just couldn’t achieve escape velocity, so he chose to escape in other ways.

John: loved Mary, but he’s just not the kind of man that can truly commit.  The grass will always be greener on the other side for him, and he’ll always have a wandering eye, no matter who he’s with.  He’s pretty self-aware, too, and he does have a conscience, so it causes him a fair bit of distress, even if it doesn’t stop him from doing it.

Mary: loved her husband and her daughter and her life, but never trusted any of it.  Good things don’t happen to bad people.  She knew it wouldn’t last, so she was always putting on an act to keep people at arm’s length.  Bonus sociopath!Mary HC: she saw the thing that was unfolding between Sherlock and Molly and she nudged them apart, rather than together.  If Sherlock had Molly, that would lessen his emotional dependence on her and John and Mary needed that leverage.  If he was single and walking a fine line between functional and spiraling into mania, she could keep a measure of control over her asset.

Molly: does whatever the fuck she wants because she’s small and quiet and everyone just assumes she’s studious and steadfast and has a hard-on for rules and order.  Whenever something goes missing or a purchase order or something looks off, they just assume they made the mistake, because Molly has binders full of color-coded tab dividers and spreadsheets for everything and there’s no way she made an error.  No one notices when she’s late or hungover or wearing her shirt inside out; she’s kind of the living embodiment of The Silents and she uses that to her full advantage.

Sherlock: knows a lot more about being a normal (and functional) human being than he lets on.  Playing a role for everyone all the time is exhausting, but he has to, because people don’t like it when he isn’t in character.  Sometimes he goes to Molly’s, because he can shake off some of those layers of disguise at her flat and just be a normal person who yawns and farts and complains about heartburn after eating greasy pizza without her acting like he’s sprouted a second head.  Usually they just sit on opposite ends of the couch with their laptops while they both do their boring-ass adulting (paying bills and work things and taxes and paperwork paperwork paperwork), working separately and not talking, but just taking comfort in the presence of another human.  He’s very careful about not letting her know too much, though, because there’s always a chance she could turn against him.  He might be more confident he’s finally found his field of bees (ala Blind Melon), but he can never trust it completely.

Eurus: never wanted to be anything when she grew up, because she knew from a very early age she wouldn’t/ couldn’t be.  She has a rich inner world.  Her sense of ‘normal’ is almost completely informed by telly; she retreats into her own fantasy world and it always plays out like a sitcom or post-watershed drama.  In it, she’s got some bland office job or she’s a department head in some Oxbridge arts college, her brothers are normal people with normal jobs and relationships and neighbors, her parents are loving and always there and bring her back quirky presents when they go on holiday.  She has a dog and has no urge to dissect it.  Sometimes she’s married to Jim (who’s comedically dimwitted and doesn’t get on with his brother-in-laws, especially Sherlock, who’s equally dimwitted), other times she’s having an affair with John and he eventually leaves his wife for her and she becomes a stepmum, then she has a baby and becomes a real mum. 

Moriarty: (crack, because I don’t have a lot of serious HCs for him) is actually not a criminal mastermind.  He lives in a grotty bedsit in southeast London and his flatmate puts him up to the craziest shit when they’re both baked/ rolling/ tripping/ on whatever, and Jim has that wild kind of luck–he always gets away with anything.  It just kind of snowballed.  He’s not even rich, just really good at lying.  He tried to get normal jobs a few times, and that’s when he met Molly and Sherlock and was legit hoping for a threesome, but then Molly dumped him before he had a chance to test the waters with tall, dark, and dorky.  He did bang the dude’s sister, though, who turned out to be Marla Singer, or like that James song “Laid.”  Kitty was alright; she wasn’t really into drugs and the sex was really average, but her shower had fucking amazing water pressure.  And that thing at the end?  The gun wasn’t supposed to be loaded, but Seb is kind of an asshole like that, always trying to spice things up.

(I’m probably forgetting people, but this is what I got for right now.)

[shetoldtheworld-blog]

Lets talk: Slavery and forced prostitution of teens in the developed world.

When we hear the word ‘slavery’ it conjures up images of ancient times- the Israelites enslaved in the Old testament, and more recently the oppression and forced slavery of people of African descent in the 1800s.

It’s pretty much eradicated now, right? No. That statement couldn’t be more wrong. We’ve all heard about forced child labour in factories overseas so we in western cultures can have fancy rugs and nice phones, designer clothes. That is horrifying to say the least. What about in developed countries though? Does it happen in the U.K and U.S.A? The short answer is yes.

Along with the dark and hidden world of human trafficking that provides hotel workers, nail technicians and masseuses- often forced to work long hours with little to no pay, in horrendous accomodation, there is another type of slavery running rampant in our modern world, and most of us are unaware of just how common it is.

Forced prostitution of vulnerable young British teens, often groomed by older men claiming to be boyfriends or friends. They’ll shower the young girls and boys with gifts, attention and coerce them into sexual acts they don’t understand, until its too late and they find themselves alone, scared and unable to get out. Here’s my story:

At almost 15, I’d met my first “proper” boyfriend, Chase. He was 18 and had long hair, a skateboard and seemed so super cool. Of course, I wanted to impress him. The idea of sex scared me a bit, as I’d suffered abuse in early childhood, but Chase was different, right?

He’d buy me gifts and tell me how pretty I was, but when I got nervous about sleeping with him he got a little angry. He told me that it’s what we’re supposed to do if we are in love, and it’d prove I’m not just an immature kid; so I went along with it because I was scared he’d dump me if I didn’t.

At first it was ok, I just really wanted to please him. We moved in together quickly, and his family were very rich so I got expensive perfumes, boat holidays and designer clothes. Keen to pay my way, I got a job in a shop, 40 hours a week. Once we lived in our own place, Chase explained after all he did for me, I should pay the rent and bills, and so I did, whilst he worked only 8 hours and kept his money to himself.

Meanwhile over time, I found myself doing all the housework, sorting all his food, baths and clothes for the day. His sexual requests got darker and spilled into every day life. I wasn’t allowed to eat, go to the toilet, wear clothes, bathe or drink without his say so and quite frequently he’d deny my requests until I was weak with hunger, or wet myself at which point he’d “punish” me. He insisted on keeping all my passwords, reading any conversations and monitoring my internet history. He’d not allow phone conversations to family unless he was in the room and I could only see the friends he decided, if he was present.

It all happened so gradually I didn’t see it happening, until I was so sucked in I couldn’t find a way out. He’d sell videos of me performing embarrassing sex acts online, even though I begged him not to. Chase kept my house keys, so when he went out I couldn’t leave and he’d drop me off and pick me up for work. Oneday, the gas meter once again ran out, my asthma inhalers were diminished and the fridge was empty. Chase checked my account to find it was too overdrawn to afford anymore of anything.

Chase said I was lazy, and needed a more lucrative income to keep the house going so he’d arranged for me to meet someone, who would employ me to do things for money, and I didn’t have a choice. We argued, I refused and fought but eventually he won, I knew I had nowhere else to go and couldn’t get away anyway.

Charlie was his name. At first I just saw him. Then he’d set up meetings with other men, somtimes groups. They’d pay Chase, around £100 for a day for using me. Sometimes other girls where there too, who seemed just as despairing as I. SJ, a girl slightly older than me and fresh out of prison who lived with Charlie, explained that the easiest thing is to co operate and get on their good side.

Every now and then I’d find a spark of defiance- always resulting in them punching and kicking me to near unconciousness. They started to offer me drugs, and I took them, out of desperation to numb the physical and emotional pain. Soon I almost stopped caring as long as they kept feeding me weed, pills and powders that I could wash down with vodka. Underweight and malnourished, constantly suffering from UTI’s and bowel problems now from relentless abuse and I’d run out of fight.

I was a hollow shell of my former self with no hope of escape. They wouldn’t let me sleep or eat, I’d had to quit my retail job and if my phone rang, Chase would tell my family I was busy. My shifts were around 20 hours a day, 7 days a week between housework, and forced sex.

The only reason I’m here to share this story today is because one day, when I was 20 years old, Chase left my phone at home by accident and I found myself daring to text my family and explain I’d split with Chase; and needed them to come and collect me right away as it was an emergency. I left everything behind and just went. I didn’t tell them what happened because I was too ashamed, and they aren’t the sort to ask. My body is mostly recovered but there will always be lasting damage physically, and emotionally the scars run far deeper.

Its taken almost 10 years to build up the courage to share this. However, most of us don’t get that lucky break, or are too scared and pass it up if it arises. We need to take action to protect our daughters, sons, siblings. Notice them, notice who they are with and make sure they are aware of the signs of abuse and are supported to get out if alarm bells ring. Above all LOVE them, offer understanding and I implore you, always make sure they can turn to you.

[96thdayofrage]

My parents’ home, in Umujieze, Nigeria, stands on a hilly plot that has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Traditionally, the Igbo people bury their dead among the living, and the ideal resting place for a man and his wives is on the premises of their home. My grandfather Erasmus, the first black manager of a Bata shoe factory in Aba, is buried under what is now the visitors’ living room. My grandmother Helen, who helped establish a local church, is buried near the study. My umbilical cord is buried on the grounds, as are those of my four siblings. My eldest brother, Nnamdi, was born while my parents were studying in England, in the early nineteen-seventies; my father, Chukwuma, preserved the dried umbilical cord and, eighteen months later, brought it home to bury it by the front gate. Down the hill, near the river, in an area now overrun by bush, is the grave of my most celebrated ancestor: my great-grandfather Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku. Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”

Long before Europeans arrived, Igbos enslaved other Igbos as punishment for crimes, for the payment of debts, and as prisoners of war. The practice differed from slavery in the Americas: slaves were permitted to move freely in their communities and to own property, but they were also sometimes sacrificed in religious ceremonies or buried alive with their masters to serve them in the next life. When the transatlantic trade began, in the fifteenth century, the demand for slaves spiked. Igbo traders began kidnapping people from distant villages. Sometimes a family would sell off a disgraced relative, a practice that Ijoma Okoro, a professor of Igbo history at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, likens to the shipping of British convicts to the penal colonies in Australia: “People would say, ‘Let them go. I don’t want to see them again.’ ” Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly one and a half million Igbo slaves were sent across the Middle Passage.

My great-grandfather was given the nickname Nwaubani, which means “from the Bonny port region,” because he had the bright skin and healthy appearance associated at the time with people who lived near the coast and had access to rich foreign foods. (This became our family name.) In the late nineteenth century, he carried a slave-trading license from the Royal Niger Company, an English corporation that ruled southern Nigeria. His agents captured slaves across the region and passed them to middlemen, who brought them to the ports of Bonny and Calabar and sold them to white merchants. Slavery had already been abolished in the United States and the United Kingdom, but his slaves were legally shipped to Cuba and Brazil. To win his favor, local leaders gave him their daughters in marriage. (By his death, he had dozens of wives.) His influence drew the attention of colonial officials, who appointed him chief of Umujieze and several other towns. He presided over court cases and set up churches and schools. He built a guesthouse on the land where my parents’ home now stands, and hosted British dignitaries. To inform him of their impending arrival and verify their identities, guests sent him envelopes containing locks of their Caucasian hair.

Funeral rites for a distinguished Igbo man traditionally include the slaying of livestock—usually as many cows as his family can afford. Nwaubani Ogogo was so esteemed that, when he died, a leopard was killed, and six slaves were buried alive with him. My family inherited his canvas shoes, which he wore at a time when few Nigerians owned footwear, and the chains of his slaves, which were so heavy that, as a child, my father could hardly lift them. Throughout my upbringing, my relatives gleefully recounted Nwaubani Ogogo’s exploits. When I was about eight, my father took me to see the row of ugba trees where Nwaubani Ogogo kept his slaves chained up. In the nineteen-sixties, a family friend who taught history at a university in the U.K. saw Nwaubani Ogogo’s name mentioned in a textbook about the slave trade. Even my cousins who lived abroad learned that we had made it into the history books.

Last year, I travelled from Abuja, where I live, to Umujieze for my parents’ forty-sixth wedding anniversary. My father is the oldest man in his generation and the head of our extended family. One morning, a man arrived at our gate from a distant Anglican church that was celebrating its centenary. Its records showed that Nwaubani Ogogo had given an armed escort to the first missionaries in the region—a trio known as the Cookey brothers—to insure their safety. The man invited my father to receive an award for Nwaubani Ogogo’s work spreading the gospel. After the man left, my father sat in his favorite armchair, among a group of his grandchildren, and told stories about Nwaubani Ogogo.

“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.

“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria. He sometimes had to flee our home to avoid being arrested. But his pride in his family was unwavering. “Not everyone could summon the courage to be a slave trader,” he said. “You had to have some boldness in you.”

My father succeeded in transmitting to me not just Nwaubani Ogogo’s stories but also pride in his life. During my school days, if a friend asked the meaning of my surname, I gave her a narrative instead of a translation. But, in the past decade, I’ve felt a growing sense of unease. African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather. I read arguments for paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves and wondered whether someone might soon expect my family to contribute. Other members of my generation felt similarly unsettled. My cousin Chidi, who grew up in England, was twelve years old when he visited Nigeria and asked our uncle the meaning of our surname. He was shocked to learn our family’s history, and has been reluctant to share it with his British friends. My cousin Chioma, a doctor in Lagos, told me that she feels anguished when she watches movies about slavery. “I cry and cry and ask God to forgive our ancestors,” she said.

The British tried to end slavery among the Igbo in the early nineteen-hundreds, though the practice persisted into the nineteen-forties. In the early years of abolition, by British recommendation, masters adopted their freed slaves into their extended families. One of the slaves who joined my family was Nwaokonkwo, a convicted murderer from another village who chose slavery as an alternative to capital punishment and eventually became Nwaubani Ogogo’s most trusted manservant. In the nineteen-forties, after my great-grandfather was long dead, Nwaokonkwo was accused of attempting to poison his heir, Igbokwe, in order to steal a plot of land. My family sentenced him to banishment from the village. When he heard the verdict, he ran down the hill, flung himself on Nwaubani Ogogo’s grave, and wept, saying that my family had once given him refuge and was now casting him out. Eventually, my ancestors allowed him to remain, but instructed all their freed slaves to drop our surname and choose new names. “If they had been behaving better, they would have been accepted,” my father said.

The descendants of freed slaves in southern Nigeria, called ohu, still face significant stigma. Igbo culture forbids them from marrying freeborn people, and denies them traditional leadership titles such as Eze and Ozo. (The osu, an untouchable caste descended from slaves who served at shrines, face even more severe persecution.) My father considers the ohu in our family a thorn in our side, constantly in opposition to our decisions. In the nineteen-eighties, during a land dispute with another family, two ohu families testified against us in court. “They hate us,” my father said. “No matter how much money they have, they still have a slave mentality.” My friend Ugo, whose family had a similar disagreement with its ohu members, told me, “The dissension is coming from all these people with borrowed blood.”

I first became aware of the ohu when I attended boarding school in Owerri. I was interested to discover that another new student’s family came from Umujieze, though she told me that they hardly ever visited home. It seemed, from our conversations, that we might be related—not an unusual discovery in a large family, but exciting nonetheless. When my parents came to visit, I told them about the girl. My father quietly informed me that we were not blood relatives. She was ohu, the granddaughter of Nwaokonkwo.

[algeroth]

My parents’ home, in Umujieze, Nigeria, stands on a hilly plot that has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Traditionally, the Igbo people bury their dead among the living, and the ideal resting place for a man and his wives is on the premises of their home. My grandfather Erasmus, the first black manager of a Bata shoe factory in Aba, is buried under what is now the visitors’ living room. My grandmother Helen, who helped establish a local church, is buried near the study. My umbilical cord is buried on the grounds, as are those of my four siblings. My eldest brother, Nnamdi, was born while my parents were studying in England, in the early nineteen-seventies; my father, Chukwuma, preserved the dried umbilical cord and, eighteen months later, brought it home to bury it by the front gate. Down the hill, near the river, in an area now overrun by bush, is the grave of my most celebrated ancestor: my great-grandfather Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku. Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”

Long before Europeans arrived, Igbos enslaved other Igbos as punishment for crimes, for the payment of debts, and as prisoners of war. The practice differed from slavery in the Americas: slaves were permitted to move freely in their communities and to own property, but they were also sometimes sacrificed in religious ceremonies or buried alive with their masters to serve them in the next life. When the transatlantic trade began, in the fifteenth century, the demand for slaves spiked. Igbo traders began kidnapping people from distant villages. Sometimes a family would sell off a disgraced relative, a practice that Ijoma Okoro, a professor of Igbo history at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, likens to the shipping of British convicts to the penal colonies in Australia: “People would say, ‘Let them go. I don’t want to see them again.’ ” Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly one and a half million Igbo slaves were sent across the Middle Passage.

My great-grandfather was given the nickname Nwaubani, which means “from the Bonny port region,” because he had the bright skin and healthy appearance associated at the time with people who lived near the coast and had access to rich foreign foods. (This became our family name.) In the late nineteenth century, he carried a slave-trading license from the Royal Niger Company, an English corporation that ruled southern Nigeria. His agents captured slaves across the region and passed them to middlemen, who brought them to the ports of Bonny and Calabar and sold them to white merchants. Slavery had already been abolished in the United States and the United Kingdom, but his slaves were legally shipped to Cuba and Brazil. To win his favor, local leaders gave him their daughters in marriage. (By his death, he had dozens of wives.) His influence drew the attention of colonial officials, who appointed him chief of Umujieze and several other towns. He presided over court cases and set up churches and schools. He built a guesthouse on the land where my parents’ home now stands, and hosted British dignitaries. To inform him of their impending arrival and verify their identities, guests sent him envelopes containing locks of their Caucasian hair.

Funeral rites for a distinguished Igbo man traditionally include the slaying of livestock—usually as many cows as his family can afford. Nwaubani Ogogo was so esteemed that, when he died, a leopard was killed, and six slaves were buried alive with him. My family inherited his canvas shoes, which he wore at a time when few Nigerians owned footwear, and the chains of his slaves, which were so heavy that, as a child, my father could hardly lift them. Throughout my upbringing, my relatives gleefully recounted Nwaubani Ogogo’s exploits. When I was about eight, my father took me to see the row of ugba trees where Nwaubani Ogogo kept his slaves chained up. In the nineteen-sixties, a family friend who taught history at a university in the U.K. saw Nwaubani Ogogo’s name mentioned in a textbook about the slave trade. Even my cousins who lived abroad learned that we had made it into the history books.

Last year, I travelled from Abuja, where I live, to Umujieze for my parents’ forty-sixth wedding anniversary. My father is the oldest man in his generation and the head of our extended family. One morning, a man arrived at our gate from a distant Anglican church that was celebrating its centenary. Its records showed that Nwaubani Ogogo had given an armed escort to the first missionaries in the region—a trio known as the Cookey brothers—to insure their safety. The man invited my father to receive an award for Nwaubani Ogogo’s work spreading the gospel. After the man left, my father sat in his favorite armchair, among a group of his grandchildren, and told stories about Nwaubani Ogogo.

“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.

“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria. He sometimes had to flee our home to avoid being arrested. But his pride in his family was unwavering. “Not everyone could summon the courage to be a slave trader,” he said. “You had to have some boldness in you.”

My father succeeded in transmitting to me not just Nwaubani Ogogo’s stories but also pride in his life. During my school days, if a friend asked the meaning of my surname, I gave her a narrative instead of a translation. But, in the past decade, I’ve felt a growing sense of unease. African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather. I read arguments for paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves and wondered whether someone might soon expect my family to contribute. Other members of my generation felt similarly unsettled. My cousin Chidi, who grew up in England, was twelve years old when he visited Nigeria and asked our uncle the meaning of our surname. He was shocked to learn our family’s history, and has been reluctant to share it with his British friends. My cousin Chioma, a doctor in Lagos, told me that she feels anguished when she watches movies about slavery. “I cry and cry and ask God to forgive our ancestors,” she said.

The British tried to end slavery among the Igbo in the early nineteen-hundreds, though the practice persisted into the nineteen-forties. In the early years of abolition, by British recommendation, masters adopted their freed slaves into their extended families. One of the slaves who joined my family was Nwaokonkwo, a convicted murderer from another village who chose slavery as an alternative to capital punishment and eventually became Nwaubani Ogogo’s most trusted manservant. In the nineteen-forties, after my great-grandfather was long dead, Nwaokonkwo was accused of attempting to poison his heir, Igbokwe, in order to steal a plot of land. My family sentenced him to banishment from the village. When he heard the verdict, he ran down the hill, flung himself on Nwaubani Ogogo’s grave, and wept, saying that my family had once given him refuge and was now casting him out. Eventually, my ancestors allowed him to remain, but instructed all their freed slaves to drop our surname and choose new names. “If they had been behaving better, they would have been accepted,” my father said.

The descendants of freed slaves in southern Nigeria, called ohu, still face significant stigma. Igbo culture forbids them from marrying freeborn people, and denies them traditional leadership titles such as Eze and Ozo. (The osu, an untouchable caste descended from slaves who served at shrines, face even more severe persecution.) My father considers the ohu in our family a thorn in our side, constantly in opposition to our decisions. In the nineteen-eighties, during a land dispute with another family, two ohu families testified against us in court. “They hate us,” my father said. “No matter how much money they have, they still have a slave mentality.” My friend Ugo, whose family had a similar disagreement with its ohu members, told me, “The dissension is coming from all these people with borrowed blood.”

I first became aware of the ohu when I attended boarding school in Owerri. I was interested to discover that another new student’s family came from Umujieze, though she told me that they hardly ever visited home. It seemed, from our conversations, that we might be related—not an unusual discovery in a large family, but exciting nonetheless. When my parents came to visit, I told them about the girl. My father quietly informed me that we were not blood relatives. She was ohu, the granddaughter of Nwaokonkwo.

I’m not sure if this revelation meant much to me at the time. The girl and I remained friendly, though we rarely spoke again about our family. But, in 2000, another friend, named Ugonna, was forbidden from marrying a man she had dated for years because her family found out that he was osu. Afterward, an osufriend named Nonye told me that growing up knowing that her ancestors were slaves was “sort of like having the bogeyman around.” Recently, I spoke to Nwannennaya, a thirty-nine-year-old ohu member of my family. “The way you people behave is as if we are inferior,” she said. Her parents kept their ohuancestry secret from her until she was seventeen. Although our families were neighbors, she and I rarely interacted. “There was a day you saw me and asked me why I was bleaching my skin,” she said. “I was very happy because you spoke to me. I went to my mother and told her. You and I are sisters. That is how sisters are supposed to behave.”

Modernization is emboldening ohu and freeborn to intermarry, despite the threat of ostracization. “I know communities where people of slave descent have become affluent and have started demanding the right to hold positions,” Professor Okoro told me. “It is creating conflict in many communities.” Last year, in a town in Enugu State, an ohu man was appointed to a traditional leadership position, sparking mass protests. In a nearby village, an ohu man became the top police officer, giving the local ohu enough influence to push for reform. Eventually, they were apportioned a separate section of the community, where they can live according to whatever laws they please, away from the freeborn. “It will probably be a long time before all traces of slavery disappear from the minds of the people,” G. T. Basden, a British missionary, wrote of the Igbo in 1921. “Until the conscience of the people functions, the distinctions between slave and free-born will be maintained.”