Grandpa Benjamin

Book excerpt: A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of storytelling, Grandpa Benjamin is narrated by Grandpa Benjamin himself. He told his grandson this story that he had been told by his mother about their ancestors beginning with the year 1776 when his great-great-great grandparents, Baatsi and Ashanti Nkrumga, were kidnapped by American slavers in Africa, separated from their two small children, and enslaved in America. This is also the story about Grandpa Benjamin and his half brother, Alexander, also born into slavery, and how they established the Zeals Community and the Zeals School in Wildflower, the place of their birth, where for several generations they and their descendants were nurtured. Their legacy continues to inspire their descendants to live productive and dignity-affirmed lives. Grandpa Benjamin, the first person in his lineage to have the surname Zeals, is a character that, even in contemporary perspective, will live in the readers imagination forever.