The Connection Between Heritage and Identity

I am proud to be Asante, as I am sure you are proud to be Fante, but after I lost my brothers, I decided that as for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation.

After Akosua refuses to shake James’s hand due to his family being slave traders, he points out that both Asantes and Fantes are involved in the slave trade. Here, in the chapter titled “James,” Akosua responds by saying that the kidnapping and enslavement of her brothers have caused her to cast off her identity as an Asante. Instead, she chooses a new identity, one not defined by or dependent upon slavery. Although heritage can be a large part of someone’s identity, Akosua shows that sometimes being true to one’s identity means disconnecting from one’s heritage. Akosua demonstrates to James that it is possible for one to step outside their heritage, the path chosen for them by their family, and live the life they choose for themselves. Her example is ultimately what enables James and Akosua to create a life of their own without participating in the slave trade.

Jo used to worry that his family line had been cut off . . . He would never truly know who his people were, and who their people were before them . . . When he felt this way, Ma Aku would hold him . . . and instead of stories about family she would tell him stories about nations. The Fantes of the Coast, the Asantes of the Inland, the Akans.

Jo, born Kojo, is the first in Esi’s line who truly never knows his parents, as he was able to escape the plantation in Alabama with Ma Aku as a baby. Though he eventually forms his own family, here, in the chapter titled “Kojo,” he expresses his lifelong fear of not knowing about where he came from and, therefore, not knowing who he truly is. However, while Ma Aku can’t tell him stories of his family’s past, she at least knows that his mother, Ness, was Asante, like her, and is able to tell him stories about people, about nations, in Africa. Even though Jo will never know his own parents, learning about his African heritage and history at least gives him some sense of where he came from, which in turn enables him to form an identity, even if it is somewhat incomplete.

Ain’t I deserve to be Ethe, to you at least, if nobody else? My mama gave me that name herself. I spent six good years with her before they sold me out to Louisiana to work them sugarcanes. All I had of her then was my name. That was all I had of myself too. And you wouldn’t even give me that.

Before H was arrested and sent to work in the coal mines, Ethe had left him after he called her by another woman’s name. Not fully understanding, H had assumed she was angry that he cheated on her. Yet here, in chapter “H,” when Ethe finally returns to H, after receiving a letter from H telling her where he was, she explains why she truly left him. Like many people born into slavery, Ethe was separated from her mother as a child, so all she has of her birth family is her name. When H called her by a different name, he essentially robbed her of her identity. Ethe could not bear to have H, the man she loves, take away the only thing that her mother was able to give her. Like many characters in the novel, Ethe shows how a name is crucial to keeping one’s heritage close.

Now, keeping her head down and fighting back tears as Tisha and her friends called her ‘white girl,’ Marjorie was made aware, yet again, that here ‘white’ could be the way a person talked; ‘black,’ the music a person listened to. In Ghana you could only be what you were, what your skin announced to the world.

When Marjorie begins high school, she is eager to have more Black classmates than she did in previous grades. However, she soon finds that she is not accepted by the other Black girls, as she speaks with an almost British accent due to her time in Ghana. At the same time, her white classmates reject her for being Black. Marjorie identifies deeply with her African heritage. However, as highlighted here in the chapter “Marjorie,” this makes her an outcast among her classmates, who see identity as something that is shaped by much more than one’s background or the color of one’s skin. Fitting in feels like a puzzle that is impossible to solve. Marjorie’s struggle shows how racism and colonization have made it that much harder for people of African descent to truly embrace their heritage and identity in places controlled by white people.

The Effects of Generational Trauma

You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, Now I will remove my knife slowly, so let things be easy and clean, let there be no mess. There will always be blood.

Here, in the chapter titled “James,” James listens to his father, Quey, talk to his friend David about the lasting effects of the slave trade. Even though the slave trade has been abolished, Quey points out that the British have not left, nor have the tribes stopped selling kidnapped people to them. Quey uses this metaphor to explain how people cannot participate in evil only to walk away thinking that the evil is gone or easy to clean up. Instead, he points out that the evil caused by the slave trade will persist for future generations to grapple with despite the slave trade being technically over. David’s metaphor perfectly describes what will happen to Quey’s descendants. Even once his son, James, makes a new life for himself, his daughter and granddaughter will continue to be haunted by the sins of their ancestors, and the evil that began in the slave trade will continue to move forward in time.

Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.

When Yaw visits his mother, Akua, she explains that she brought Effia’s black stone pendant to a fetish priest, who told her there is evil in her family lineage. This knowledge, along with her repeated nightmare of the woman on fire holding two children, is what led Akua to set her family’s hut on fire in her sleep. Here, in the chapter “Yaw,” Akua explains to Yaw how evil is passed down from generation to generation, unable to be stopped when people are not even aware of the evil that exists among them or what caused the evil in the first place. The evil in their lineage was their family’s involvement in the slave trade, which haunted each family member until Akua finally recognized it for what it was. By being able to identify and face the evil that has plagued their family, Akua was finally able to put it to rest.

And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.

In the chapter titled “Marcus,” Marcus hits a wall while researching the convict leasing system of which his great-grandfather was a victim, as he does not know how to separate this system from other racist systems and institutions before and after it, from Jim Crow laws to the “war on drugs.” Marcus feels so angered by the injustices Black people have suffered throughout history that he is tempted to slam his book on the table in the silent library. However, Marcus knows that doing so would signal that he’s an “angry Black man” and that being an angry Black man would only fulfill the stereotype other people expect, leading him to the same fate as his great-grandfather and his father. Marcus knows he must behave in a way that is even more controlled than his white peers. In this scenario, Marcus demonstrates how difficult it is to overcome generational trauma and societal racism, though his anger at the injustices of history is justified.

The Horrors of Colonization and Slavery

“But for the rest of her life Esi would see a smile on a white face and remember the one the soldier gave her before taking her to his quarters, how white men smiling just meant more evil was coming with the next wave.

When Esi is forced out of the castle’s dungeon on to the boat, the British governor, James Collins, smiles at her pityingly, and, here, in the chapter titled “Esi,” she recalls the smile she saw on the face of another British soldier before he raped her. At the age of fifteen, Esi has already experienced the horrors of slavery and knows she can never trust the smile of a white man again. This is something Esi and her sister’s descendants will learn over generations. They understand that often, a white person doing something in the name of kindness, such as the white missionaries attempting to “save” Africans from their heathen ways or colonization, which aimed at educating and bettering African people, is actually only meant to oppress African people. That something as pure as a smile now indicates danger and future trauma is a true crime.

They would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind.

James thinks this thought in the chapter titled “James,” as he listens to his father and his father’s friend discuss the end of the slave trade. James reflects on how he knows there will never truly be an end to slavery, as it will simply transmute and take on a new form that many won’t recognize as slavery at all yet will still enslave those who were oppressed before. For example, even without slavery, the British can maintain control by pitting tribes against each other, by taking ownership of the land, and by driving out African culture and religion with missionaries. With as much wealth and power as there is to be gained, James knows that the British will continue oppressing Africans one way or another. Whether it’s called slavery doesn’t matter; the effect will be the same.

Besides, if we go to the white man for school, we will just learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free.

As Yaw is writing a book on African independence, his friend Edward encourages him to go to America to learn about the American Revolution. Here, in the chapter titled “Yaw,” Yaw responds to Edward’s suggestion by saying Americans would not teach Africans how to gain independence but would instead teach their version of things for their own gain. After generations of seeing the British colonize Africa, Yaw doesn’t trust stories or information from white people. As he explains to his history students, history is often taught through the eyes of the oppressor, who often leaves out important truths that might reveal their actions and motives in a negative light. This whitewashed history also purposefully lacks non-white voices and excludes the stories and perspectives of the oppressed. For this reason, Yaw feels there is nothing to be learned from the white Americans who have oppressed Africans for so many years.

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