The novel Segu by Maryse Condé tells the vivid story of a family plunged into the chaos of a rapidly changing world. Condé does a phenomenal job of putting readers into the mindset of his many colorful characters, allowing them to access the thoughts and motivations behind these characters' actions. The story is exceptionally complex and yet the individual stories all seem linked to the Traoré family who are at the center of the novel. Various themes all play a role in Segu's narrative. From religion to the transatlantic slave trade, from family to commerce, all these themes come together to form a story that ultimately crosses cultures, continents and centuries. This article will focus on the themes of family and religion. The first thing people usually do when they encounter or learn about a culture or civilization different from their own is to instantly start comparing and contrasting the two, especially the family unit. There are great differences between the Bambara, Fulani and Muslim cultures in various parts of Africa. Compared to the European lifestyle, it might as well be a whole different world. A striking attribute of the Bambara people presented in the novel is the size of their family units. A main character who surrounds a good part of the novel, Dousika Traoré, is the father of around twenty children carried by legitimate wives and at least two illegitimate children carried by a concubine and another by a slave. In addition to her own large family, Dousika lives in a compound with her own brothers and their own families. The interdependence of the family and the bonds that unite them are undeniably loyal, however the real feelings they have for each other are all...... middle of paper ...... ekoro un "dirty nigger" and declaring that she would never marry a stinking black man. A striking moment after this encounter is when Tiekoro explains the events to Siga and wonders how the terms black and negro have no meaning to him. In his mind, he is a Bambara nobleman. In Gorée, following the story of Naba, renamed John the Baptist as a slave, we see a glimpse of the racism of Christianity. The slaves were separated into two distinct groups, a smaller group was made up of domestic slaves who worked for the officers of the local Gorée fort, the signares or various civil servants working on the island, the second, incredibly larger group was made up of “huddled human livestock”. in slave houses. This apparently indistinct separation of Africans between domestic slaves and slaves who would ultimately perform heavy physical labor seems reminiscent of slavery practices in America...