[Cross-posted from New Books in History] Most of what we know about the trans-Atlantic slave trade–particularly before the nineteenth century–comes from documents produced by slavers and those Europeans and euro-Americans who interacted with them. Most, but, as Kwasi Konadu points out in Transatlantic Africa, 1440-1888 (Oxford University Press, 2014), not all. It is possible, Konadu shows, to construct a narrative of the slave experience from the perspective of Africans themselves. You just have to know where to look and listen. Konadu knows and in this interview he shows how the slaves understood their hard experience.