#Return of the time bandit how to

And your mind as free as the mighty sea.”Īlexander is an accomplished writer, decorated with the top awards given to authors of literature for young people. (One senses an incredible effort to be politic, almost a plea for patience.) “Now you must walk through. For the possibility that is in us,” Alexander says in his author’s note. “It was a hard story to write, but it was one that needed to be told. On the other side lies “slow passage/over troubled waters.” Kwasi, Kofi’s older brother, accidentally kills an opponent in the annual wrestling match against their rival village, which retaliates by killing him and taking Kofi to be traded by the British at a castle on the coast, where he encounters the door of no return.

He’s also in love with his schoolmate Ama but is too shy to tell her. He’s forced to speak only English at the school he attends, and he has challenged a boy who bullies him to a swim race in their local river.

Kofi lives with his family in an Asante village that already reflects the influence of British colonialism.

#Return of the time bandit how to

Alexander understands how to select a suitable context for what could be viewed as a study in writing, publishing and marketing a popular work on slavery in our time for young readers. In truth, these issues are never explored. flag when the novel is set in September 1860, months before the outbreak of the American Civil War and decades after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the United States, speaks to the clandestine nature of the enterprise and its persistence despite the laws against it. The fact that the slave ship transporting Kofi flies the U.S.

THE DOOR OF NO RETURN, by Kwame Alexanderīehind the seemingly straightforward details of history in Kwame Alexander’s new novel-in-verse, “The Door of No Return” - the first book in a trilogy following a Ghanaian boy caught in the praxis of the Atlantic slave trade - there lurks complexity.