I started the discussion by asking the group: Did you just
love Sankofa? I did. I had read it over a year ago and I just re-read it
over the last two days.
Robin: I didn’t love Anna, I guess she had sort of tough childhood.
I just wanted her to be tougher, braver. I thought she was so different in how
she responded to things the way I would’ve, but I wasn’t raised as a biracial child
by a white woman.
Robin gave us a summary of the story:
Anna is a biracial woman
in her fifties(?) her mother was white woman who lived in London but was Welsh.
Her father was an African Student named Francis Aggrey who rented a room from
Anna’s grandfather in the 1950s. Anna’s mother found out she was pregnant after
Francis Aggrey went back to Africa.
Anna was brought up in the household of her mother, her
grandparents, and her aunt Caryl. Anna grows up and gets married to a white man
and has a daughter Rose who totally passes for white.
Francis Aggrey became a revolutionary then spent years in
prison. He later became Prime Minister after his country gained independence.
Francis Aggrey was renamed Kofi Adjei. Some people called him a dictator and
nicknamed him “The Crocodile.”
After Anna’s mother died, she goes through her things and
finds her father’s diary, which he kept when he was a student. Anna reads about him and finds out about him becoming the Prime Minister of Bamana with a
reputation for brutality. By this time, he’s no longer Prime Minister but he
still wields a lot of power.
Bonnie: I’m conflating this book with the book Passing by
Nella Larsen. And the theme that comes out to me is wanting to be with your own
folk. Even if you’re brought up in another different situation you still yearn
to have that identity. The father was not such a mensch. He had some bad history
too. I think I thought about Trump a couple of times, reading about him. Yet
she still wanted that connection.
Arthur: I thought it was an amazing journey of finding
one’s self… a kind of homegoing not in the sense of death but in the sense of
finding your inner self. I enjoyed the exploration of the question of African
Socialism as African countries were gaining their independence in the 1960s and
1970s.
Marian: When you
said that you thought about Trump, Bonnie, it reminded me of what Marcellina
said. She said that Kofi did all these terrible things and now we have this new
prime minister and inflation is crazy. This is just like how it is in the US.
We had a president who did all these terrible things, now we have a new guy and
inflation is crazy. I liked the book. I think that the action picks up at the
last third. The first two thirds were the set-up: The narrator established how
she was raised and how her mother would not concede that she was being
discriminated against and that people were calling her bad names. She wouldn’t
even try to seek out people who may have helped with her daughter’s hair. I’d
read this book called Surviving the White Glaze by Rebecca Carroll. The biracial
author in that memoir who was adopted by a white family living in an all-white
community lamented that nobody could help her with her hair. Your identity
means so much and the people around you are saying “we don’t see color”. Well, that’s just not helpful.
The mother’s sister Caryl was a more realistic person than
the mother. They lived in Caryl’s house for a year before they moved into their
own council housing. I loved the scene when she went to see Caryl at the
nursing home.
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| Chibundu Onuzo, author |
Patricia: one of the things that stood out was Rose
basically says, “Get it over it mom.” That’s easy for Rose to say because Rose
looks completely white. I was alive during these times. I thought it was a
great that the author really addressed how messy and how full of faults human
beings are. We climb up the ladder a little bit then we slide down a little
bit. I think that was reflected in almost every single one of the characters, particularly
Anna, her father, and Robert. A lot of characters struggling just figuring it
out.
Marian: you didn’t mention that when Robert cheated on
Anna, the woman he cheated with was also Black. Another book we discussed was Such
a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. The Black protagonist found out that her white
boyfriend had only dated Black women and wondered if he had some kind of
fetish.
Debbie: I read it in one day. In the last part especially, I
kept being afraid that things were really going to close in on her. Getting
back to Anna’s childhood with her mother, at one point she said that they moved
into a neighborhood where someone did help her with her hair.
Marian: You said something about things closing in on her,
that speaks to the skill of the writer. I had already read it, and I knew she
didn’t get killed or maimed or anything. Even still I got so nervous for her. When
she got in the car with Marcellina, I thought, “No don’t go, stay in the palace!”
Then when the father took her on that overnight camping trip, I thought to
myself, “This is it! He’s going to kill her!” How could I think that when I had
read it before? The writing brought up that anxiety.
Sun: It’s also protecting the egg: the future. There’s also Sankofa hearts. You see them on fences and gates all the time. It’s very popular. You see it on iron rails all the time and you may not recognize it.
Connie: I was really intrigued by Anna’s development. I
think that she was trying to find herself. It was time for her to read that
diary and go be brave. When she actually went there, she saw that her father
was both good and bad. She said, that’s ok. She kind of gained some courage and
some peace of mind.
Marian: I found her to be wishy-washy, but I understand why.
Just as in YA books, there’s a happy ending. I thought this ending was a little
forced. I thought for this kind of story there should have been an ending with
more conflict and more questions.
Robin: Even if you had been cast under a magic spell an
hour before?
Marian: That was pretty crazy, but it went with the culture.
There was an uncle suspecting a niece who’s nine years old of being a witch…and
having her tied up in a shack, there were places that were still filthy and the
people who were going without. The further you walk away from the middle of the
town there’s basically huts with no glass for windows. The father realizes this
is his culture. Some concessions must be made to the people. The police
aren’t going into the countryside and
arresting the people for practicing the old ways. I like how the writer described
when Anna found out that Marcelina had freed the girl and she thought “I’m so
ashamed, I should have stomped right back to this palace and demanded that my
father free this girl.”
Sun: I’m not sure. The book touches upon colorism and
deliberate ignorance of not talking about race even though you have a biracial
child.
Marian: Caryl was more realistic; she took Anna to Knotting
Hill because she wanted her to see people who had dark skin.
Marilyn: can someone tell me why the aunt took anna to see dark-skinned
people? Does Anna know why she did it? Did she explain it to the child?
Marian: I think the child might have been too young to
explain this to. I think she just did it for the exposure.
Robin: I think the aunt was not happy with the way her sister
was raising this biracial child as though she was white. It was so upsetting
how her mother raised her. And yet in conversation with her brother and he said,
“Were you loved?” She said “Yes.” When she asked him, “Were you loved?” he
said, “Sometimes.” The one thing her mother really did give her was a lot of
love. I know her father did a lot of bad things but I wouldn’t have asked him
those hard questions. I would have established the relationship first.
Debbie: She also kept calling him Kofi until the day she
called out “Papa!”
Robin: The thing that kept sort of pulling me back in terms
of being able to say maybe he’s okay, was that they kept bringing up that thing
about that group of five college students. At the very end her father says to her
think twice about that. Be careful what you say in front of your followers and
sychophants because you never know what they’re going to go off and do, so what
he’s saying is that he may have had blind followers who went off and did that
dirty deed and he wasn’t directly related to that. Once I read that I said to
myself, “Oh OK, that makes him a little less scary to me.”
Meghan: One thing I really enjoyed was the fairy tale end
of the book where she’s having that vision of all her ancestors and there’s this
woman in a sari who’s standing there greeting her from the other shore and
she’s like Where did she come from?” This woman must have been in her Welsh
family or perhaps even her African family. Her grandfather was so accepting and
open, giving of his space to an African lodger,
Marian: When the grandfather accepted the African boarder,
he had said, “I know what it’s like to be an outsider.”
Laura: This book seemed like it was a quest for wholeness.
At first it seemed like it was just Anna’s quest but both Kofi and Anna needed
something from each other. It’s very gratifying when you’re on a quest and you
feel someone reaching back towards you. To feel the connection and the healing
on both ends was very powerful.
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