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Esi

Summary: Esi

Esi, who has recently turned fifteen, has spent the past two weeks in the crowded dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle. Before the dungeon, Esi was the daughter of the Big Man in her Asante village. Esi’s mother, Maame, had refused to use one of the many prisoners of war as a slave until Big Man insisted. Maame chose a girl named Abronoma, who at first was bad at the chores around the house. Maame tried to protect Abronoma from being beaten by Big Man, though Big Man said that Abronoma must carry a bucket of water across the yard without spilling or he would beat her. Abronoma carried the water successfully until she took the bucket off her head and two drops spilled. Big Man used his switch to beat Abronoma in front of everyone.

Maame was distraught after Abronoma’s beating, and Esi tried to console her by saying that Big Man would have looked weak if he had not beaten Abronoma. Maame replied that only weak people treat others as if they belong to them. Abronoma told Esi that her own father was her village’s Big Man as well and that Maame used to be the slave of a Fante family. Abronoma told Esi there could be peace between them if Esi contacted Abronoma’s father to tell him where she is. One night, a call went throughout the village warning of an impending enemy attack. While Abronoma joyfully said her father had arrived, Maame gave Esi a black stone and told her she gave the same one to Esi’s sister before urging Esi to run. Esi ran into the woods and climbed up a tree before being knocked out with a rock.

Esi was tied to others on the long walk to the castle. On the way, they stopped in a Fante village, where the chief Abeeku brought out white men to inspect the captives. When a warrior named Fiifi began to untie Esi’s cloth wrapper, where she had hidden the black stone, she spit in his face. Fiifi hit Esi on the head, and she fell to the ground crying, a distraction so she could swallow the stone. Esi was able to retrieve the stone from her waste in the dungeon and then hid it.

One day, a British soldier takes Esi to his quarters, where he rapes her. Eventually, Governor James, whom Esi recognizes from the Fante village, comes to the dungeon and orders his men to take a group of women including Esi. Esi is marched out of the dungeon before she can retrieve her mother’s stone.

Analysis: Esi

Sisters Esi and Effia both end up in the same castle, though their physical position is reflective of their eventual fates and the fates of their descendants. Like Effia, Esi comes from an important family. However, the comparison of Esi’s and Effia’s stories shows how lives can go down remarkably different paths based on nothing more than luck. Esi’s life seems to have started out better than Effia’s, as she had two loving parents. However, Esi would not have been born if her mother had not escaped Fanteland via the fire on the night Effia was born. Even before Esi is captured, the precariousness of a person’s circumstances is demonstrated by both Maame and Abronoma. While Maame now has a privileged position, she remembers the horrors of slavery many years later and feels immense anger at those who perpetuate the system, including her husband.

People like Esi, who grow up seeing slavery normalized, do not seem to think much about its horrors, as it is all they have ever known. However, Maame’s trauma is clear by how she first resists using slave labor and then tries to protect Abronoma. Abronoma, like Esi, was the daughter of a Big Man, though colonization and the nature of war meant that her position changed on a dime. In the end, Esi’s fate is the same as that of Abronoma.

Like Effia, Esi receives the black stone pendant from her mother, connecting her to her past. However, Esi fears that she will lose it as soon as she is confronted by the soldiers in Asanteland. Esi knows that one of the most powerful ways for colonizers to exert their strength is by depriving people of their identity and heritage, so she swallows the stone instead of losing it or risking the soldiers taking it. However, though Esi goes to great lengths to protect it, in the end she is forced to leave it behind as she is she is led onto a slave ship. Esi’s fate means that her descendants will have no connection to their heritage or culture, symbolized by the loss of Esi’s pendant.

While being held prisoner, Esi is violently raped by a soldier, which will result in a pregnancy. This is the same fate her mother experienced before escaping Fanteland, showing how little regard enslavers have for the enslaved. This treatment then perpetuates trauma and pain across generations. Even though Maame attempted to escape this pattern the night of the fire, it found her once again on the night of the enemy invasion. This seems to be why Maame refused to put herself through an attempted escape again, as she knew it would be impossible to truly escape the confines of slavery.

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