Previous Next

As a young child, someone had told her that the scars her father wore on his face and her grandmother on her hands and feet were born of great pain. And because Marjorie had no scars that resembled those, she could never bring herself to complain of pain.

Throughout Marjorie’s chapter, we see her reluctance to open up to those around her with her emotional pain. We primarily see this tendency in how she refuses to share with her parents the racism she experiences during the dissolution of her relationship with Graham. Her reluctance to discuss her complicated feelings around Blackness with Mrs. Pinkston also comes from this tendency. As a Ghanaian American, Marjorie carries different cultural trauma than a Black American, and she is afraid her worries about becoming akata may seem trivial or hurtful compared to the histories of slavery.

At her new high school, there were more black children than Marjorie was used to seeing in Alabama, but it took only a few conversations with them for Marjorie to realize that they were not the same kind of black that she was. That indeed she was the wrong kind.

Marjorie’s experience transferring schools highlights the way her cultural experiences as a Ghanaian American separate her from the Black American students. Culturally in the United States, people tend to assume all people with Black skin are African American, descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas. Even the other Black students assume that Marjorie should have similar cultural touchstones and experiences as they do because she looks Black. These expectations cause Marjorie to feel like her Blackness is the wrong kind.

Loneliness, maybe. Or aloneness. The way I don’t fit here or there. My grandmother’s the only person who really sees me.

Marjorie makes this comment to Graham during their date at the rocket center. When Graham asks if she’d like to go back to Ghana, she observes that she no longer feels like she belongs there. At this stage of the novel, Marjorie believes that home is a place that understands her perfectly, where her belonging is never questioned. Living in the United States has irrevocably changed Marjorie, alienating her from other Ghanaians, while she feels outcast from her Black American classmates. She will later be able to bridge both worlds by guiding Marcus back to Ghana.

She would have hated to know that it’s been so long. Almost fourteen years. When my parents were alive, they used to try to make me go, but it was too painful, losing her. And then I lost my parents, and I guess I just didn’t see the point anymore.

Marjorie makes this statement about her grandmother in Marcus’s chapter, when he asks about whether she’s gone back to Ghana. Marjorie has a difficult time returning to Ghana because her grandmother always reminded her that she belonged there no matter how long ago she left. Marjorie’s hesitance to return after the loss of both her grandmother and parents mirrors how the American side of the family has been cut off from Ghana because they do not have knowledge of their ancestral line. Akua’s earlier promise to Marjorie that she can always come home signals to the reader that Marjorie can still go back to Ghana, and if she can, so can Marcus.

Previous section Esi Next section Marcus

Take a Study Break