Aminata diallo autobiography of a flea market

Lawrence Hill is the author of several fiction and non-fiction books, including the novel Someone Knows My Name and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.

He has worked as a journalist for The Globe and Mail and The Winnipeg Free Press, and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Q: The main character in your novel Someone Knows My Name, Aminata Diallo, remains in a reader's mind long after he or she finishes reading the book.

Is Aminata based on a real person, and why did you decide to write the book from the perspective of a female character?

A: Aminata comes straight from my imagination. She is not based on a real person, although I did give her the name of my eldest daughter, whose name is Genevieve Aminata Hill.  As I wrote the story, I tried to imagine the character Aminata as my own daughter and to ask: "What would she do, and how would she survive --not just physically, but emotionally?" I chose to write from th