Emmanuel Saboro (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for African and International Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He obtained his PhD at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), University of Hull, England. He is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), African Humanities Program. His most recent publication Slavery, Oral Tradition and Identity Construction has appeared in T. Falola & T. Akinyemi (Eds), Palgrave Handbook of Oral Traditions and Folklore (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

• ContentsForewordAcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsNote on Transcriptions and TranslationsIntroduction: Envisioning the Past in the Present: Hearing the Unsaid1 Northern Ghana and the Historiography of the Slave Trade2 Reconfiguring Enslavement and the Slave Trade in Africa: the Place of Oral Tradition3 Memory/Remembering4 Sources and Methods5 Structure of the Book1 Remembering a Fractured Past: Historicizing Violence, Captivity, and Enslavement in Northern Ghana in the Nineteenth Century1 Introduction2 The Gold Coast and the Trans-Atlantic Connection3 Navigating Histories, Constructing Identities: Geography and People of Northern Ghana, the Bulsa and Kasena in Perspective4 Post-abolition Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century5 Asante and the Slave Trade in Northern Ghana in the Nineteenth Century6 The Zabarima Slave Raiding Hegemony in Northern Ghana7 “Babatu Has Really Dealt with Me and I Know”: the Portrait of a Ruthless Leader8 ‘Places, Places Are Still There’: Salaga, a Bloodied Landscape of Captivity, Enslavement, and Dispossession9 Conclusion2 The Song as a Cultural and Historical Archive for Reconstructing the Past1 Introduction2 The African Song Tradition: a Brief Overview3 Song Traditions in Northern Ghana: the Bulsa and Kasena in Perspective4 “They Have Killed Me, Killing of a Different Kind”: Dirges/Laments/Sorrow Songs5 War and Victory Songs6 The Bulsa Battle Cry7 The War Flute8 Performing Pain: Song, Ritual Dance, and Performance9 “Singing Rocks”: The Pikworo Slave Camp Songs10 Conclusion3 ‘Unspeakable Things Spoken’: Cultural Constructions of Trauma, Mourning Loss1 Introduction2 Framing Violence: Metaphorizing the Kanbong (Foreign Enslaver) as the Other3 Sexual Violence4 Of Mothering and Motherhood5 Of Place, Belonging and Home6 Where There Are No Graves: Metaphorizing Death and Mourning Loss4 “Sins of Our Fathers”: Re-reading Indigenous Complicity Narratives1 Notions of Betrayal: the Insider Motif2 The Politics of Silence: Survival or Complicity?3 Conclusion5 “We Are Free at Last”: Local Adaptations and Indigenous Resistance Strategies against Captivity and Enslavement in the Hinterland1 Introduction2 “We Have Fled, Fled a Lot”: Flight as a Survival and Resistance Strategy3 The Landscape and Hollow Trees as “Refuge Sites”4 Hiding in Hollow Trees5 Drums of War: Contestations and Deconstructing Notions of Victimhood6 Animistic Metaphors as Counter Representation Strategies7 The Lion8 The Elephant9 Celebrating Triumph over Tragedy10 ConclusionConclusion: Freedom beyond the Wound and the SilencesGlossaryBibliographyIndex

"In this important and well-researched book, Emmanuel Saboro draws from original oral sources to show us how communities in northern Ghana are bearers of a collective memory of the transatlantic and internal trades." - Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History, Howard University