Freedom Braids
Monique Duncan and Oboh Moses
Lantana

Every morning, Nemy, a child on a plantation walks through the fields scattering seeds, pulling out weeds and stripping leaves. She watches Big Mother hard at work cutting sugar cane, cooking yucca roots and in the evening she listens to her stories before bed. Then one night Nemy follows Big Mother to a shack, outside which sit a group of women braiding one another’s hair. She too has her hair braided, by Big Mother, and it makes her recall her own Nana. Nemy feels part of the community of women that night as she too forms lines of plaits just the way her Nana has taught her and in so doing she evokes the smells of the oils and herbs her Nana used.

In the midst of her protective community, the girl learns how to braid maps, messages and information concerned with freedom into another’s hair;

even seeds were hidden in cornrows that would be planted once the wearers were free. This entailed keeping careful watch of their captors as they crept out into the forest once night fell, staying clear of danger thanks to the dark surroundings. This is what Nemy and her fellow group members did until finally they’d left behind the sugar fields, trudged through forests and finally found a place to establish a new home – freedom at last!

In a final spread, author Monique Duncan explains how her story is based on real life experiences of the enslaved, in particular those in Columbia ,and includes some fascinating information about the meaning of the various styles of hair braiding.

Despite the terribly unjust treatment of those sold into slavery, the enslaved courageously found their own ways of resisting and this poignant story is infused with hope. Oboh Moses’ digitally rendered, almost exclusively nocturnal scenes of the women capture their beauty and serenity, and his use of colour intensifies the drama particularly in the scene where the women are on the path to freedom.
A book that deserves, indeed needs, to be shared widely as a reminder of the courage shown by the enslaved during the centuries of the Transatlantic slave trade.