Ajeemah and His son offers a different view of the African slave trade because it focuses on Jamaican plantation slavery rather than on slavery in the southern United States. It covers the period from the year before the importation of African slaves was outlawed to a period after slavery was altogether outlawed in Jamaica.

The history that forms the setting for the novel is accurate and not sensationalized. Ajeemah and Atu are kidnaped by other Africans and sold by them to ship owners who transport them to Jamaica, where thy are sold to plantation owners. The entire degrading process is vividly dramatized by the responses of Ajeemah and Atu to their experiences; Berry shows how the humanity of formerly free men is systematically torn from them. They are robbed of their property, stripped and oiled for display like farm animals, forced to live among excrement and...