WoMan: The Inescapable Patriarchy in 'The Book of Negroes' and 'Milk and Honey' Anonymous College

WoMan: The Inescapable Patriarchy

Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes and Rupi Kaur’s poetry and prose collection, Milk and Honey, may cover vastly different topics, but both works have one thing in common – a female narrator. While The Book of Negroes follows African girl Aminata Diallo and her experiences after being kidnapped and sold into slavery, Kaur delves into the subjects of sexual abuse, love and femininity in her series of works. Both Hill and Kaur touch on the struggles of a female trying to create and maintain her own narrative in a society that has been male-centric for so long. In many ways, Aminata is a character that subverts gender expectations and manages to resist male dominance over her self. However, even this breakthrough from the patriarchal tradition is not a complete one, and Kaur’s poems further problematise the issue. While Aminata and Kaur’s positions as authors attempt to repossess the female narrative in a male-centric society, Milk and Honey complicates this attempt by suggesting that it is not possible for the female to completely break out of the patriarchal tradition.

As a character who resists her subordinate position in a patriarchal society, Aminata is shown to defy the male gaze, the act...