This is supposed to represent Amanita's confusion that she has developed regarding her identity. In Africa, where Amniata was born, she was free. She had no one to control her in any way. However, everything disappeared once she arrived in South Carolina. Amniata struggled to understand who she was and what she had become for a long time after her arrival on the Appleby plantation. He soon learned that he was no longer his person, but was property. Her virginity, her body, and even her children were not hers. She was called African, black and slave, people couldn't even pronounce her name, now she was "Meena" and not Amniata. No one has ever heard of his village. In essence, the Bayo girl daughter of Mamadu Diallo and Sira Kulibali no longer existed in this new life, in the novel she says “This, I decided, was what it meant to be a slave: your past didn't matter; in the present you were invisible and had no right over the future” ( ). Ultimately, this led to Amniata being very conflicted. He could no longer refer to his past, his present was not under his control, and his future was one of great uncertainty. She did not understand how to consider herself, if she herself did not know, then who she really was