The Power of Story

from "Someone Knows My Name" by Lawrence Hill. This is an historical novel based upon the story of one African girl captured into slavery and transported to the "New World". The protagonist (at the end of her life) is asked to tell her story to aid in the cause of abolition. This is what she says,

"The abolitionists may well call me their equal, but their lips do not yet say my name and their ears do not yet hear my story. Not the way I want to tell it. But I have long loved the written word, and come to see in it the power of the sleeping lion. This is my name. This is who I am. This is how I got here. In the absence of an audience, I will write down my story so that it waits like a restful beast with lungs breathing and heart beating."