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used another novel. The difference is the writer will analyze The Book of Night Women novel using African American Criticism to know the form of racism in the
novel. Second, the student of University of Sumatra Utara, The Impacts Of
Segregation And Discrimination Reflected In Kathryn Stockett’s Novel The Help written 2014 by Rini Sijabat. She explored the kinds and impacts of segregation
and discrimination. From her analysis, there are four kinds of segregation, they are, segregation in housing, public school, public transportation and hospital. It
happens because the minority groups believe that they are inferior and cannot struggle against the whites’ power. And as the result, the neighborhoods, schools,
and other public facilities for the dominant group are both separated from and superior to those of the minorities. And there are three kinds of discrimination,
they are, discriminantion in economy, politic, and social issue. The impacts of discrimination is poverty, unemployment, violence, alcoholism and high disease.
Rini Sijabat thesis has similarity with this study. The similarity is the topic of the study which is about racial discrimination. The differences are first, the
object of the study that is different novel and the author. Then, the writer will analyze the topic using African American Criticism while Rini Sijabat used
sociological approach. The third review comes from the student of The State Islamic University
of Su nan Ampel Surabaya, Discrimination in William Blake’s The Little Black
Boy written 2015 by Anitya Hendri Prawesti. She found the depiction of black
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children were divided into three parts. The first is black children feel disappointed and he is motivated by his mother and at the end of the poem, black children have
high expectations that black children and white boys can be together in the future life. Second, this study showed the factors that lead to segregation in The Little
Black Boy. There was segregation that includes colonialism, racial discrimination race, racism, racial discrimination. Racial discrimination in The Little Black Boy
is when black children are treated differently than white children. Anitya Hendri Prawesti thesis has similarity with this study. The similarity
is the issue about discrimination. The differences are, first the object of her study is poem while the object of this study is novel. Then, she used Poscolonialism and
Structuralism theory, while the writer will analyze the issue using African American Criticism.
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CHAPTER III RACISM IN
THE BOOK OF NIGHT WOMEN
The Book of Night Women is one of novels written by Marlon James. It tells about African slavery in Jamaica during the 18th century. James presents the
life at Montpelier, a sugar plantation in Jamaica. In that plantation, slaves were often treated brutally by their white overseers, who whipped, raped, and even
murdered them. Many female slaves, often barely beyond childhood themselves, bore children as a result of the sexual abuses of white overseers.
“Montpelier, like other estate on the east coast, have one white man for every thirty-three negro..... Johnny-jumpers they call them, five to ten
in number and they work with whip and on some estate, knife and gun. When a field nigger not keeping up the quota of ground to plough or
cane to cut they whip him in the back or punch him in the face or kick him in the balls and tell him work harder ‟cause he not no prince
regent here. The Johnny-jumpers raid the slave settlement at night like they be pirate, taking the supper that just cook, or if they hungering for
a something else, grabbing the daughter or the mother even if her titty lanky and her pussy no good......” The Book of Night Women : ch. 1 p.
4-5. The above passage tells the cruelty of life being the plantation slaves. The
suffering of slaves is so remarkable. They have to work under the watch of a white overseer who administer 33 slaves for each white overseer. The overseers
carry a whip as well as some other tools to punish the slaves if they do not work hard. The slaves received much violence, such as being beaten, whipped until
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kicked up. The slaves undergo the violence not only in the morning and daytime when they are working at the plantation, but also at night when the overseer came
to satisfy their h unger by snatching the slave‟s supper and satisfy their lust by
raping the female slaves without seeing their age and physical appearance.
The story in The Book of Night Women is narrated by a daughter of female slave names Lilith. She intends, at first, to tell a story about her life, but ends up
telling about her mother‟s story. However, she reveals herself as the narrator at the end of the novel.
“.....The first time me write, me wanted to tell a different story, a story ‟bout me, not a story ‟bout her, but such is she that every nigger story
soon become a tale ‟bout they mother, even the parts that she didn‟t tell herself. The first time me ever write ‟bout me mother was
December 27, in the year of our Lord 1819. This was the first thing me write.You ca
n call her what they call her. I goin‟ call her Lilith.” The Book of Night Women : ch. 31 p. 233.
At the beginning of the novel the narrator told how Lilith has already suffered a violence even at her first breath. She was born when her mother was 14
years old as a result of sexual abuse by an overseer named Jack Wilkins. Lilith was orphaned because her mother dies directly after giving birth to her. A new life
has just snatched another life. “...the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and
squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood,
and she who don‟t reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse ‟pon the
