The Dreamland Springs

The Dream of a Slave Son

Slave Son tells much about the early Africans and their slave ancestors. In the novel, a child is born and later at the age of eighteen is captured into slavery to continue life in the new world as a slave. Before his birth, the author narrates the processes to include every aspect of the African social fabric and culture based on the rules and regulations their ancestors instructed. A family among the Akans of Ghana is used as a base to tell the story, which is almost true of every family in Africa. Most African families emigrated due to family disputes, lack of procreation in marriage, puberty rituals before a girl could be given to marriage, and the rule by elders, chiefs, and queen mothers. The life of the ancestors before the slave trade is still practiced today by many cultures in Africa today.
On the contrary, the African prince, who was shipped to the plantations in the New World, lived a horrible life as a slave under his owner who gave him his name. The type of life the slaves lived before emancipation and immediately after emancipation is addressed in Slave Son to educate the readers, especially those in the nonslave-holding countries to be more aware of what the African ancestors endured as slaves. By reading Slave Son, people of African descent would understand and respect each other as people of the same blood belonging to the same ancestry tree.