According to the author, monuments give life and power to the past. They remind us of things we do not fully know, stories we cannot touch, and histories we may never uncover.

I believe the author wants us to understand why history is full of silences. Some events leave traces while others do not, and those in power decide what counts as a fact and what gets recorded as a source. This is very accurate. In the past, when historians wrote about Africa and its people, they often dehumanized the continent and its inhabitants. Even today, those writings continue to shape negative perceptions about Africa.

An essential point to remember is the role of “power” in shaping history. To fully understand the past, we must examine how power operates and influences every part of the narrative.

I completely agree with the author. when an author tells a story, something is always left out. No account is ever complete, sometimes because of the author’s perspective or bias, sometimes because facts are missing or hidden, and sometimes because details are intentionally omitted. That’s why readers should examine and read critically a the content. Identify potential gasp and consult additional source to recover what was left out.

At every stage, choices are made . What is it to record, what to keep, what to use, and what to highlight. Each choice involves power, which means some voices are amplified while others are silenced.

What I understand the author to be saying is that people should not focus on asking “What is history?” in an abstract way. Instead, we should look at the facts and the story that explains them , and how the story wants people to understand the events, what its objective is, and whose perspective it represents.

At the same time, the social-historical process and the narrative construction can make a story feel confusing. But this dual nature is exactly what makes history a story. The two sides of the events themselves and the way those events are told are what give a story its meaning.

If I understand correctly, the author is saying that actors are not always active as subjects, but the capacity to become subjects is always there. For example, in a strike: most of the time, workers simply come to work and do their jobs. But the possibility of a strike is always present, and it can become reality if certain conditions are not met.

II believe the author wants to point out that in a story, the actors don’t just do things , they also decide the event and give it meaning. For example, if we simply say that people didn’t come to work, that could mean anything: maybe they were sick or had the flu. But if we say they went on strike, that changes everything. A strike means people came together, collaborated, and made a collective decision to act in order to make their voices heard about an issue.

I believe the author means that when we look at two situations that seem similar, or when we read a historical story, we need to go deeper than the surface. For example, slavery in Brazil and in the United States may look alike at first glance, but the details make a big difference. In Brazil, some enslaved people could work for wages in cities and sometimes even buy their freedom. In the United States, however, laws made manumission much harder, and the racial boundary was much stricter under the “one drop rule.”

When I read a story, I usually focus on learning for myself, without thinking about the fact that the people in the story were once alive. But people in history were not just passive figures. They were shaped by social structures , they acted within those structures, and they also had voices to tell their own stories .

This is fascinating. I never thought about reading a story in that way. When I read history, I usually just read it to learn, without being critical in that way.

The slave trade started in the 1400s and ended in the 1800s. Why didn’t African people take effective preventive measures to avoid being taken by those human traffickers?

“Those people were barbaric. Why did they take even the children?”

According to history, by 1839 the slave trade should have already been eradicated. Why were people still being shipped as slaves?”