From being kidnapped, to sold into the slave trade, Ottabah does an amazing job at detailing the sound of misery and pain within enslaved individuals. He described being taken away on the boat in a heartbreaking way: "Death was more preferable than life." It details the horrifying reality that these soon to be enslaved individuals were considering mass suicide by lighting the boat and fire and perishing with it. These first person accounts of slavery are often hidden within the education system, I wish I had hear more heartbreaking first encounters with slavery as I did in this passage . It has always been hard to grapple with how these individuals dealt with the horrific transition to slavery. Ottabah's story is a immaculately written first-person perspective that is extremely vital to history. I highlighted this sentence because I wondered when Ottabah changed his name to a more English sounding name -- John Stuart. Do you think this Ottabah's name change was done out of protection or done by a third party? I believe it was probably done as a third party in order to strip Ottabah of his kinship, separating himself further from his identity. I look forward to hearing what you think too!

Sadly, I do not believe that the American justice system deserves to be the story's hero. I believe the fight began in West Africa and doesn't require a white-washed justice system to be a hero regarding fixing the issues that they themselves created.

This here represents how media is extremely important in creating the narrative of history! It helps s decide what is an important lesson to have learned in the past, especially so it does not happen again! However, as the next paragraph says, it doesn't mean the media is totally accurate so we must be mindful of that.