Previous Next

Abena

Summary: Abena

Abena heads back to her village, thinking of how her status as an unmarried twenty-five-year-old is likely due to her father’s reputation as being “Unlucky,” as his crops have never grown. Abena asks her parents if she can visit the Asante city of Kumasi. When her father refuses, Abena taunts him about his lack of success, and he hits her for the first time. After her father leaves the hut, Abena’s mother explains that they are not welcome in Kumasi, as Abena’s mother defied her parents by marrying Abena’s father, who was a descendant of several Big Men. Abena’s mother explains that her father wanted to live a life for himself, and knowing he’d want the same for Abena, she encourages Abena to visit Kumasi.

That night, Abena visits her childhood friend Ohene Nyarko and convinces him to take her to Kumasi. While touring the palace in Kumasi, an old man thinks he recognizes Abena as her father, James. While Ohene goes to buy farming tools, Abena wanders on her own until she comes across a group of villagers listening to a white missionary, and Abena thinks of the evil that has been done by white traders. While Abena and Ohene make their way home, they spend the night in a cave and make love. Ohene promises to marry Abena after the next good harvest. However, everyone in their village has a bad harvest for the next few years, which they blame on Abena and Ohene’s affair. The villagers agree that Abena would be cast out of the village after seven bad harvests or if she becomes pregnant.

During the sixth bad harvest, Abena and Ohene make love before he goes to another village to collect a new plant, cocoa. When Ohene returns, he is able to grow cocoa trees. While the village celebrates Ohene’s success in trading the cocoa, he rebuffs Abena, who suspects she is pregnant. Ohene explains that he promised a man he would marry his daughter in exchange for the cocoa plants and so cannot marry Abena. When Abena tells her parents she is leaving the village, her father makes her take a black stone necklace, which he explains belonged to his grandmother, Effia. Abena’s father tells her that he came from a family of slavers and, though he is called Unlucky, considers himself lucky as he’s able to do honorable work. The next day, Abena sets out for the missionary church in Kumasi.

Analysis: Abena

Although Abena’s father, James, was able to distance himself from his family’s participation in the slave trade, his refusal to tell his daughter about his past shows how disconnecting from one’s heritage can have implications for later generations. Abena blames her father on her own status as a single woman and does not understand her parents’ reluctance to let her travel to Kumasi. Abena also thinks with disgust of slave traders, unaware of her family’s own participation in the institution. However, this is due to James’s own shame of his family. James is so opposed to Abena being recognized as his daughter in Kumasi that he cannot allow her to do what he once felt he did in striking out on his own. It is only once Abena feels she must leave the village that James fully explains his own past and gives Abena Effia’s black stone pendant, helping Abena finally understand her own past.

Abena’s ignorance of her family’s past also compels her to grapple with the nature of home. As an unmarried woman still living with her parents, Abena does not feel she has a true home, which is why she wants to go to Kumasi. There, she marvels at the Asante history, allowing her a greater connection to the heritage she is largely unfamiliar with. However, Abena also sees the influence white people are still trying to wield in the region. Although she is aware of the damage caused by the presence of the missionaries, in the end, seeking refuge in a missionary school is Abena’s only option as an unmarried pregnant woman. The nature of home is complicated by European colonization, as the colonizers assert power under the pretext of trying to help vulnerable people.

Although James has escaped his family’s participation in the slave trade, his failure as a farmer seems to suggest that he is still being punished for his family’s crimes. As a result of James’s lack of success, Abena cannot find a husband, showing how the cycle of generational trauma persists. As Ohene will not marry her, Abena conceives a child out of wedlock and must leave the village, implying that her own child will be a victim of this cycle of trauma as well. James, knowing the fate he would have been bound to if he had stayed in his home village, is grateful for his ability to live a simple life with a woman he loves, even if it means he is not wealthy. However, James’s choices have had irrevocable impacts on Abena, forcing her out of the only home she knows. This cycle reveals how hard it is to extract oneself from the slave trade while still creating a successful life for future generations.

Previous section Kojo Next section H

Take a Study Break