‘Abina and the Important Men’ by Trevor R. Gets, and Liz Clarke tells a story about a young girl who attempts to have her voice heard by people of higher class and status. However, her voice is constantly silenced and people with the agency are always the people in control of Abina’s life. In Abina's story, class, status, and agency are the things that actually matter when it comes to having power. Those in power are usually of higher class and status, rather than a specific race or gender, as we would picture slave owners today. Class and status are more prominent in this idea of powerful people, and this can be seen through the story between the silencers and the silenced. It is important to understand how these people of power silenced Abina as well as other girls like herself.
The voices that are actually heard and present, are those of the important men in the story. The reason these men were important was because they could cause change and because they had agency. Men controlled Abina throughout her entire life and decided her fate for her. We can see this in the court case and the flashbacks. One example in the flashbacks where Abina was silenced comes from Part I, where she tells the story of how her husband left her with Quamina Eddoo. When Quamina Eddoo tells her who she is to marry, she refuses because she believes she is still married to her husband, Yaw Awoah. However, upon hearing this, Quamina Eddoo and other men ridiculed her because her husband had actually sold her, and now it does not matter what she says or how she feels, she must obey and listen to Quamina Eddoo because she is a slave once again to a different man: “I was a slave once more” (24).
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Another example comes from Part I in which Abina’s husband is called to the stand. Her Husband, Yaw Awoah, lies about buying her as a slave and claims that he did not sell her to Quamina Eddoo. He claims that he had to leave for Asante and that he asked Quamina Eddoo to watch his wife Abina until he returned. In Part II, Abina goes into questioning Yaw Awoah, trying to get him to admit that he is lying, but ultimately fails since Yaw Awoah, or Yowahwah as stated in Part II, is a male (109). Since Yaw Awoah was a man, his version of the story was more credible, and anything that Abina had to say did nothing to help her case.
A third example of these men controlling her life comes from a flashback in Part I, in which Abina describes what her life was like before Quamina Eddoo. During this time, she was owned and was a slave in Asante, and was beaten and logged. The fact that she was sold to Yaw Awoah, who told Abina that she would be his wife, shows that she has no control over her life (22).
These important men with agency and status are ultimately in control of Abina’s fate. However, men were not the only gender who had some control of her life. Even the sister of one of these men, Quamina Eccoah, was able to silence Abina, even though she was the same gender. An example of this is seen in Part I and II, where Eccoah is able to silence Abina. In the courtroom when Eccoah is on the stand, she gives answers that seem to prove innocence for herself and her brother. She lies about some of the information and gives false answers to the questions asked (64). She does this because she is very aware that her story will be believed over that of Abina’s. Since she is the sister of Quamina Eddoo, she has more status than Abina, which gives more credibility to herself and her story.
This evidence is important because it shows whose voices matter and whose voices are shoved aside, no matter what gender is in power. This evidence also shows that men and women of African race controlled Abina as well as other girls alike, and this is because of their higher status and higher class. Quamina Eddoo is a powerful African slave owner whose reputation is high. Because he is so important, no one wants to upset him, and because there were other slave-owning men in the jury, Melton, the magistrate of this case, knew he had to please these men, and in the end found Quamina Eddoo, not guilty (75).
The voice that is silenced is mainly Abina’s, but the other slave girls are silenced as well, and while Abina can make her voice heard, she does not have the power to create change. This is evidenced in Part I: anytime Abina speaks, her opinion is ignored, and because of the language difference, she becomes confused often, which gives the important men more reason not to believe her. This ends up negatively affecting Abina and contributes to the deprivation of Abina’s ability to make change happen (29). An example of these other slave girls being silenced comes from Part I, where the court proceeds without the girls as witnesses, even though “their testimony is relevant to proving how Abina was treated” (59). After the defense states, “My client is an important man, and he has been unable to carry out his business for almost a week now”, the magistrate decides to move forward with the trial even though the girls could help Abina’s case (59). The fact that the magistrate so quickly moved on with the trial suggests that because Quamina Eddoo is an important man, he has the upper hand and it also suggests that Abina does not really matter, and neither do the other girls. The only reason there was a trial is that, as stated in Part III of the book, the British banned the slave trade and had just begun to criminalize it in the newly created colony and protectorate in 1874 (127). This means that the British had to make it appear as if finding justice for the complainant was important to them. This evidence is important in showing the many times Abina’s voice was silenced or not heard. It is also important to show and prove that, like Abina, other slave girls were not heard, and their voices were not even cared to be heard. Because these girls are of the lower class, have no status, and are poor, taking advantage of and exploiting them is very easy for these men of high status.
This story of slavery has very little to do with race. It’s all about class and status as the African men and women depicted in this story are in control of lower class or poor Africans. While the slaves are mainly young African girls, the people of power aren’t classified as one specific race. The reason slavery “came to be a female condition”, was because girls were thought to be less likely to run away (127). This trend increased once slavery was criminalized, and they eventually preferred girls because they would be less likely to report to the British (127). Gender has nothing to do with these people of power either since Quamina Eccoah was the sister of one of these important men who also affected the outcome of Abina’s case. This evidence is very important because it allows the modern-day audience to see that it was not white males as slave owners, the way we would picture slave owners in modern times. This evidence gives the modern audience an inside look into a different kind of slavery.
Within this story, there are flashbacks and the court case as well, which show how Abina’s life was mainly a life of serving others. These men in power successfully silence Abina on multiple occasions, and because they have the agency, they are able to obtain the outcome they wanted from the case specifically. However, although Abina was silenced by these men, the long-term outcome would have made Abina happy since she is finally being heard. Now in more recent times, her story has been published and is read by people all over the world. This overall topic of silence is important because it is one of the main themes of Abina’s story. After first reading this book, I came to the conclusion that Abina was telling the truth throughout the entire case, however, because she was a young African girl, with no status and no agency, people who had more power were able to take advantage of her. While I feel sympathy for Abina during her time as a slave, I am glad her story was discovered and is being heard.
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