Olivia Schienke

  Hey Ben! I also thought that the idea of petit marronage was very interesting. It was a way of these slaves to reiterate to their masters that they still had human rights. In doing this it gave them some power over their masters and the relationship became a two-sided thing instead of just the master controlling the slave and the slave completely submitting.

       This week what stood out to me was the book that we read, The Autobiography of a Slave. In the book, Manzano, a mulatto slave tells his story about his life. It shows the differences between how masters treated their slaves and how slaves thought and did things. With his first master, Manzano was treated as a son to her. He was raised with an education and was never punished. When she died, however, he was under the ownership of a much harsher mistress. This is where he realized that he was a slave and he was beat and treated like he was not human. He lived a very sorrowful life and through this book we are given insight to the thought and feelings of slaves at this time. Also, being a mulatto, at times he was treated like he did not belong anywhere. This would create conflict in his head and give him a sense of being lost.      This autobiography shows us how dehumanized slaves were and gives us information on how these slaves could try to gain...

  Hey Annika! I like how you brought up the term slave as still being somewhat present in todays society. Even though it is not literal slavery, there are people out there who have jobs that they are overworked in and abused in. I have never really thought about how that could relate to slavery and I like how you connected our world today with how things were back then. It really shows how we still need improvement in todays society.

 This week as we watched the movie Quilombo and discussed it in class, I found it very interesting to see how although it may seem like the battle of resistance is lost, it continues on because of the fight. In the movie, Ganga Zumba and Zumbi had different ideas on what was best for their people and it caused disunity within the community. However, Ganga Zumba poisoned himself for the reason of uniting the people again and they fought the Portuguese as a whole community. In the end even though most of them died in the fight, they still achieved their main goal of their freedom. They died free instead of living under control. Also, when it shows the one survivor, it shows hope for the future of Palmares and it shows that the resistance goes on even though it seems that they had lost.