Pan-Africanism and Globalized Black Identity in the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho

8/7/2019 Pan-Africanism and Globalized Black Identity in the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho

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Pan-Africanism and Globalized Black Identityin the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho

and Kwadwo Opokwu-AgyemangOyeniyi Okunoye

Te act that most o contemporary Arican writing is immersed in the

historical and the social constantly poses a challenge to reading and

theorizing it. Te boundary between text and context is oten so thin

or blurred that it becomes dicult to distance texts rom their ena-

bling situations. Tis convergence implies that any attempt at transer-

ring values that are already taken or granted in Western traditions o

critical practice will distort or misrepresent literary practices in this case.

Te situation is becoming increasingly complicated as various national

literatures are acquiring distinctive idioms based on the unique ways

that social and creative traditions negotiate their terms o engagement.

Te challenge that this poses to theorizing Arican literature is to ap-

preciate the traditions that sustain specic literary eorts and appraise

them accordingly. Ghanaian literary culture, an aspect o which is the

object o this exploration, is very unique in the sense that it exhibits a

considerable sense o historical awareness. Tis historicity testies to its

implication in the discourses that sustained the nationalist project in

much o what used to be British-controlled West Arica in general and

the ormer Gold Coast in particular.1 Ghanaian writing exhibits a great

deal o Pan-Aricanist consciousness, a reality that has much to do with

the nations history and the conscious way that a Pan-Aricanist outlook

has been sustained within the Ghanaian intellectual tradition and public

lie.

Ghanaian writing has probably borne more o the Arican historical

burden than any other national literary tradition in Arica and this is its

unique input into the constitution o Arican writing: Ghanaian writers

generally privilege realities that are central to dening the experiences o

black people rom the pre-colonial era to the present. It is no surprise,


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

or instance, that three out o the our writers that Cristel empels stud-

ies in Literary Pan-Aricanism are Ghanaian. wo major actors explain

this orientation in Ghanaian writing. Te rst is that Ghana has many

o the reminders o the traumatic experience o slavery, the single most

important assault on the continent, which constantly inspire creative

reection on the experience. Tese are mainly orts and trade posts that

European slave traders used:

Ghana boasts the distinction o having sixty castles, orts,

and lodges built along its three-hundred-mile coastline. TePortuguese were the rst to protect their trading interests by

building Sao Jorge da Mina, or St. Georges castle, at Elmina

in 1482; thereater the Dutch, Swedes, Prussians, Danish, and

British all competed or dominance, with many ortications

changing hands as one European power triumphed over an-

other. With the abolition o the slave trade, these structures

were oten used as colonial administrative oces and prisons;ater independence in 1957, some unctioned as schools or

military training academies; Christianborg castle in the capital,

Accra, has served as Ghanas seat o government since 1876.

(Richards 622)

Te monuments have become important or the development o a herit-

age tourism built around the experience o slavery. Tese historical sites

attract diasporic Aricans who are eager to trace their Arican roots andemotionally recapture the origins o the Arican diaspora. Te second

actor is that Ghanaians have particularly sustained the Pan-Aricanist

vision and this has come to be associated with the way the Ghanaian

nation itsel is imagined. Kwakwu Larbi Korangs Writing Ghana,

Imagining Arica situates Arican modernity within a trans-national

ramework and demonstrates the sense in which the intellectual history

o Ghana must proceed rom acknowledging the oundation that a ormo Pan-Aricanism rom the nineteenth century laid the oundation or

the Ghanaian outlook on the Arican identity. Te act that Ghana was

also the rst Arican country to gain independence rom the British

naturally placed the responsibility o leading the rest o the continent on


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Pan-A r i can i sm and Globa l i z ed B l a ck Ident i t y

her. Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence and became her

rst president, sought to translate his vision o an integrated Arica into

reality by also encouraging Ghanaians to long or an Arican nation in

which people o the Arican diaspora will also have a sense o belonging.2

He consequently promoted an ocial policy that encouraged people in

the Arican world to return as a practical expression o the grand dream

o uniting Arica and recovering rom her ragmentation by colonial-

ism. Tis reinorced the link between the new nation and the Arican

diaspora to the extent that many diasporic Aricans3 either relocated

to, or had extended sojourns in, Ghana. But the concern with shared

historical experiences in the Ghanaian literary imagination has never

been limited to the backward glance that the preoccupation with the

involuntary removal o Aricans through slavery represents. Ironically,

more critical attention seems to have been devoted to the seeming obses-

sion o this literary tradition with the consequence o colonial incursion

and the ailure o independence that is just a phase in the engagement

with the black condition in Ghanaian writing.

I. raumatized Memory and the Black Literary Imagination

While it is not possible to separate the engagement with the histori-

cal and cultural connections between continental Arica and the rest

o the Arican world in Ghanaian writing rom the propagation o

Pan-Aricanist ideals in Ghanaian national lie, it is also possible to ap-

preciate the same reality in the context o the strong link between blackwriting in general and collective memory. Black writing is remarkable

or its ability to compel a journeying back in space and time to reect on

the assault o history as it seeks to locate black peoples and their condi-

tions in time. In the process, it prioritizes shared experiences as opposed

to personal quests. Te consequence is that no inormed reading o the

black expressive culture will ail to appreciate its immersion in history.

But because no literary tradition simply reproduces history, the blackcreative imagination is almost obsessed with recreating, reinterpreting

and recovering remarkable experiences. For people o Arican descent

orcibly taken away rom their lands and peoples, these include slavery

and the consequent loss o identity, the agony o the Middle Passage and


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

the eventual quest or reedom and integration in the new environment.

In continental Arica, the sad events include the loss o a substantial

population in very dehumanizing circumstances, the protracted assault

o colonial exploitation and dominance as well as the irresponsible

manner in which the indigenous ruling elite has been managing inde-

pendent Arica. In every case, the writer seems to have been preoccupied

with the challenges o history and the urgency o recovering rom its

negative impact. Tese experiences, unpleasant as they are, have inspired

unique orms o musical and literary expression.

It is not dicult to demonstrate the sense in which almost every

major event in the black historical experience has been recreated in

Ghanaian letters. Various generations o Ghanaian writers as well as

dierent genres have sustained this commitment in a variety o ways.

Ko Anyidoho opines that [Pan-Aricanism and the issue o slavery

dominate Ghanaian literature because there is no major Ghanaian writer

who has not engaged either or both o these themes in his or her work

(Conversation 8). Kwado Oseyi-Nyame demonstrates in his study o

the novels o Kwabena Selky and J.E. Casely Hayord, two Ghanaian

nationalists, that a great deal o Pan-Aricanist consciousness animated

their imagination. Ayi Kwei Armah has given the most eloquent con-

temporary expression to the transnational consciousness that centralizes

black experience, and his work explores various aspects and phases o

the same history in a way that makes him register his vision o the black

experience in a consistently passionate ashion. Tere is a tendency inthe works o these writers not to be content with exploring the Arican

but the wider black experience and thereby recognize anities to black

people who have been separated rom the homeland. Tis is the sense

in which we should appreciate the ease with which Awoonors Comes

the Voyager at Lastand Armahs Osiris Rising, or instance, privilege the

trope o return in which the amiliar quest or sel-discovery that inspires

many diasporic Aricans to come to Ghana in the bid to appreciate theirroots, now provides a basis or ctional recreation.

But while ctional recreations o Arican history are amiliar, engage-

ments o the same experiences in the genre o poetry have not enjoyed

adequate consideration in spite o the act that they are ar more diverse


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and inventive. Te desire to imagine experiences that transcend local-

ized realities and imaginatively construct a black world is a value that

the works o Ko Awoonor, Kwabena Eyi Acquah and Ko Anyidoho

share with the poems o Langston Hughes, Kamau Brathwaite, and the

Congolese Jean Baptiste ati-Loutard. While the poems have been stud-

ied as works o art and have also been located within the oeuvreso theirauthors, it will be exciting to read them comparatively with other works

that inhabit the same space. Works as diverse as Langston Hughess

Te Negro Speaks o Rivers, Kamau Brathwaites Te Arrivantsand

Jean Baptiste ati-Loutards Poems o the Sea demonstrate proound con-

sciousness o the variety o journeys that have shaped the black identity.

Joseph McLaren maintains that Hughess Te Negro Speaks o Rivers

[] written prior to his journey to West Arica, suggests the literary

seeds o Arocentricity through reerences to the Nile and the pyramids

(528). Te Congolese ati-Loutard captures the pain o loss that the in-

voluntary shipment o Aricans caused those let behind and emotionally

recreates the assault o the Middle Passage in a way that makes the sea,

the site o the ordeal, the eternal witness to the afiction o his people.

Braithwaite, a West Indian historian and poet, has presented what is ap-

parently the most elaborate recreation o the black historical conscious-

ness in his poetry. It is so wide-ranging in scope that it maps the many

journeys that have shaped identity constructions in the black world.

In a sense, these poets draw inspiration rom thejourneysboth

spiritual and spatialo Arican peoples in various parts o the world.Tey also acknowledge the bridge between Arica and the rest o the

black world, underscoring a deep awareness o ragmentation. Tis

article seeks to account or the inspiration or this consciousness and

demonstrate the sense in which Ko Anyidohos AncestralLogic and

Caribbeanbluesand Kwado Opoku-Agyemangs Cape Coast Castlebuild

on the Pan-Aricanist consciousness by imagining the possibility o

constructing a global black community. It suggests that writings by con-tinental Aricans on slavery and related experiences may be seen as com-

plementing the component o the literature o the Arican diaspora on

the same subject. Adopting the strategy o close reading in the study o

AnyidohosAncestralLogic and Caribbeanbluesand Opoku-Agyemangs


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

Cape Coast Castle, I read the collections as presenting contemporaneous

constructions o Pan-Aricanism in the sense that they appreciate the

act that the historical and cultural ties that bind black communities in

Arica and the black diaspora dey the constraints geography poses to

their sense o cultural and historical anity

II. Pan-Africanism and the Vision of Wholeneness

In spite o the act thatPan-Aricanism as an ideal eatures requently in

various struggles o Aricans in and outside the continent, it has never

designated a single and coherent consciousness because its various pro-

ponents have come to be identied with dierent and oten conicting

conceptions o the shared dreams o Arican peoples. Right rom the

rst Pan-Arican conerence that was held in London in 1900,4 Pan-

Aricanism has been identied with a variety o agitations and move-

ments that prioritize nationalist dreams in Arica and the struggle or

restoring the dignity o diasporic Aricans. In other words, it has always

been inormed by the various challenges conronted by global Aricans.

But, it has also responded to the peculiar conditioning that the im-

mediate environment dictated in shaping or modiying its aspirations

in each context. Tus, Pan-Aricanism can in a general sense be said

to encompass all the discourses, ideologies and all cultural and political

practices which have been mobilised as a means o conronting the his-

torical derogation o Arican peoples (Osei-Nyame 138). For diasporic

Aricans, it provided the impetus or a collective quest or dignity inthe ace o racial discrimination and the prejudices that the experience

o slavery imposed on individual and group aspirations in addition to

serving as catalyst or celebrating a shared Arican heritage.

While providing a rallying-point or mobilizing diasporic Aricans to

revive a common sense o Aricanness and prompting a desire to recon-

nect with their continent o origin, Pan-Aricanism also created a major

platorm or agitating or sel-determination in Arica. Pan-Aricanistconerences, or instance, gave priority to the urgency o Arican lib-

eration, and this was a meeting point between diasporic Aricans and

Arican nationalists who were to constitute the ruling elite in post-inde-

pendence Arica. Michael Williams recognizes the shared values in the


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Pan-Aricanist thoughts o Martin Delany, Edward W.Blyden, Marcus

Garvey, George Padmore, Ras Makonen, Pane Robeson and Kwame

Nkrumah and Zionism (293), and associates a more restrained variant

with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who, in spite o seeing the prospect o an

integrated Arica in the spirit o Arican unity, still saw it as a possibility

in the uture. Sonia Delgo-all, in underscoring the apparent lack o

consensus among Arican leaders in this regard has, in this vein, argued

that Nkrumahs Arica could not be Senghors Arica nor could it ever

resemble Sekou oures (293). A way to appreciate this dichotomy is to

recognize what Ali Mazrui calls the distinction between Pan-Aricanism

oliberation and Pan-Aricanism ointegration (35, original emphasis).

While Nkrumah, or instance, desired a continental government, most

others either did not subscribe to it or were simply content with other

orms o integration that would not necessarily lead to oreiting the

opportunity to govern their individual countries.

While a common vision or experience o Pan-Aricanism was impos-

sible in the various parts o the Arican world, we cannot deny the act

that it has served and continues to serve a variety o purposes. What is

pertinent is to appreciate its essence in spite o its various realizations.

Tis, in my estimation, consists in a quest or wholeness. Te longing

or wholeness is a logical response to the ragmentation that the many

orced removals o Aricans to dierent parts o the world caused. It

received impetus rom the desire to recuperate rom the violence that

the balkanization o Arica into territories by European powers causedin the nineteenth century. Tis may account or Pan-Aricanisms ambi-

tious agenda, embracing every imaginable aspect o lie that has suered

some orm o assault in Arica or in the larger Arican worldculture,

religion, economy, politics and identity.

III. Reconstructing Black Identity

Even though Pan-Aricanism designates the sense o communality be-tween continental Aricans and their dispersed kindred, it has, in reality,

never adequately accounted or the totality o the Arican world because

the Pan-Aricanist project has always privileged the trans-Atlantic axis

o the Arican diaspora. In underscoring the exclusion o a signicant


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

component o the Arican diaspora rom conventional mappings o the

Arican world, Paul iyambe Zeleza suggests that the historic Arican

diasporas can be divided into our categories in terms o their places o

dispersal: the intra-Arica, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and Atlantic

diasporas (44). While admitting that the Atlantic has the most devel-

oped historiography, he sees the necessity o exploring the others. Ko

Anyidoho presents a similar argument in Te Pan-Arican Ideal in the

Literature o the Black World:

o talk o the black world is to talk o the worlds ve conti-nents and most o its inhabitable islands, especially the islands

o the Atlantic, the Pacic, even the South Seas. In our search,

however, we must be careul not to dwell only on where black

people may be ound in signicant numbers

o dene the boundaries o the black world we must begin,

not by acing the geographical world, but by conronting the

word black. Tere seems to be something illogical and almostirrational, in the application o this colour term as the den-

ing characteristic o a whole race. Te glaring act is that a great

majority o those reerred to are anything but black. Tis is par-

ticularly true o the black diaspora. (23)

o adopt the diasporic model in dening the relationship between

Arica and the rest o the black world will at once imply recognizing a

great deal o shared values as well as divergences. While cultural Pan-Aricanism sustained nostalgia or the homeland and resulted in many

diasporic Aricans resettling in various parts o Arica, spatial and tempo-

ral gaps make it necessary to appreciate the act that diasporic Aricans,

ater many centuries o settlement in various parts o the world, do not

necessarily share exactly the same realities with those in the homeland.

Tis is what characterizes the relationship between diasporas and their

homelands in general. As Sean Carter explains,

[t]he idea o a diaspora is attractive in the sense that it oers a

progressive possibility o non-essentialised sel, and can break

the supposed xed relationship between place and identity.


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Within diasporic communities this can be achieved through

the maintenance o multiple connections between the present

here and a past there. (54)

Contemporary Ghana, in which much o the poetic imagination that

relives the enduring ties between Arica and the Arican diaspora thrives,

nurtures a consciousness o the presence o the past and the act that the

history o the nation is incomplete without considering its strong ties

with people o Arican descent in various parts o the world. Te vision

o Nkrumah, the most ardent promoter o Pan-Aricanism with regardto appreciating a sense o Arican brotherhood, has endured in Ghana

as it has permanently stamped aection or members o the global black

amily on the collective consciousness o the nation. Proo o this is the

signicant presence o those that Obiagele Lake describes as diaspora

Arican expatriates in Ghana, and the inux o diaspora Aricans into

the country through the tourism industry built around such heritage

sites as the slave orts, the W.E.B Du Bois Centre or Pan Aricanism andan event like Pan-Arican Historical Teatre Festival (PANAFES).5

Anyidoho argues that PANAFES, in particular, has become a ocal

point or Ghanas traditional image as the home o Pan-Aricanism on

the Arican continent and that several contemporary Ghanaian writ-

ers are turning more and more to the subject o Pan-Aricanism, with

special attention to interrelations between continental Arica and the

diaspora (National Identity 16).o underscore the possibility o what I describe in this article as the

reconstruction o a black identity, by which I reer to the eort to link up

imaginatively various black diasporic communities with the homeland,

is not to suggest that the Pan-Aricanist project has become irrelevant.

On the contrary, the diasporic awareness in this case is intended to map

specic situations and recognize particular locations o Arican peoples,

each o which is seen as unique but also related to the homeland. As willbe clear rom reading the two collections, it is possible to harmonize this

outlook with the conventional expression o Pan-Aricanism. It simply

modies the oten vague and romanticized vision that characterized ear-

lier understandings o the Arican world, and it is sae to assume that it


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may become the standard way to dene relationships in the black world

in the twenty-rst century.

While Ko Anyidohos AncestralLogic and Caribbeanbluesand

Opoku-Agyemangs Cape Coast Castlemay dier in certain respects, it

is important to draw attention to the unique and common insight that

they give into the representation o the Arican world in contemporary

Ghanaian poetry. Te collections demonstrate that it is not only writers

in the Arican diaspora that are preoccupied with the tragedy o slavery

and the emotional longing or all that was lost in the process. Tey

represent the agony o Aricans who have had to live with the depriva-

tion, loss and emotional trauma that the involuntary relocation o mil-

lions o their peopleathers, children andbreadwinnersbrought

to them as well as the consequent emasculation o the continent. In this

sense, the poets underline the act that the story o slavery, as well as the

yearnings it created among the community o the enslaved, will be in-

complete without reerence to how it is represented by the societies that

were plundered. Te collections present complementary explorations o

the whole phenomenon. While Cape Coast Castleis almost exclusively

concerned with accounting or the origin o the slave-derived Arican

diaspora, AncestralLogic and Caribbeanbluespresents a contemporane-

ous mapping o the Arican diaspora. But as with other imaginative rec-

reations o the black experience in the Arican diaspora, the two works

underline the diverse implications o these events. Te act that the

works were inspired by intimate and sustained engagements o the poetswith the realities that they representas stated in the extended intro-

ductions to the collectionsreinorces their signicance. Anyidoho is a

cultural activist with particular interest in Arican and Arican-heritage

literatures,5 while Opokwu-Agyemang, equally demonstrates concern

with the history o slavery beyond his creative work. His argument in

A Crisis o Balance: Te (Mis) Representation o Colonial History and

the Slave Experience as Temes in Modern Arican Literature conrmsthis emphasis:

For the most part our creative writers hug the bare shorelines o

Arican history, touch the colonial experience and report that


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to be all there is. Te vastest depths and structures o Arican

history, slavery and the slave trade, is hardly ever regarded in a

sustained way or mined in any serious ashion or its lessons, its

truths and its metaphors. (64)

IV.Cape Coast Castleand the Other Half of the Story

In a ten-page introduction to Cape Coast Castlethat situates thecastle,

rom which the book takes its title, in history and justies the concern

o the collection,6 Opoku-Agyemang expounds the signicance o Cape

Coast Castle in the discourse o trans-Atlantic slavery and its diverse

symbolic values. Te poems that the castle inspired are a product o

sustained reection on its lingering and disturbing presence. Te poet

recognizes what the castle symbolizes not only or diasporic Aricans but

also or the immediate community which he describes as the victim

society:

Te victim society consisted o the ordinary members o thecommunity, neither slaving chie nor warlord, who were given

as gits to slavers, or were haggled over and sold: captives, pris-

oners o war, the kidnapped and the total range o people swept

away, or who daily suered the threat o capture. Apart rom

the actual captives there were those killed in slave wars, and

those who could not endure the arduous march to the castle.

Yet, tragic as the ate o all these victims is, perhaps the mosthorrendous experience o all the victim society belonged to a

group hardly ever mentioned in the literature: the damned who

survived, those deprived relatives o the captured Arican. (5)

Te poets extensive introduction to the collection is very helpul in the

sense that it provides sucient historical insight into the making o the

castle and what it represents to him. In a sense, we may read this inter-

vention as an attempt to capture much o the burden that the poemsbear.

Cape Coast Castle is unique because, most o its poems, in spite o

being divided into three parts (Four Hundred Years o Vigilance,

People in Me and First rip o Sunrise) conrm the sense in which


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

the history o slavery that the castle represents haunts the present. Te

poems that are related to the main concern o the collection are in the

rst part, constituting about hal o all the poems. While a temporal gul

exists between the experiences with which the castle is associated and the

moment o its recreation, slavery is not spoken about as a distant reality,

but as one that various generations o the victim society must psycho-

logically engage. It is in this sense that the work attempts to present an

aspect o the story o slavery that is not possible to encounter either in

the narratives o enslaved Aricans or histories o slavery written on the

other side o the Atlantic. Te collection makes no pretense to recreating

the origins o all Arican diasporas; it concentrates on the trans-Atlantic

slave trade identied with the castle. It thereore complements whatever

the direct victims o slavery and their descendants have had to say about

the experience, revealing the complexity o the experience even within

the black historical experience. In this sense, it reinorces the argument

o J.F. Ade-Ajayi that in the end all Aricans and peoples o Arican

descent were victims, not beneciaries o the slave trade (9).

Certain tropes acilitate meaning in Cape Coast Castle. Te most recur-

rent is the awareness that the perspective the work presents on slavery is

here (Arica) which comes beore and blends with whatever is there

(trans-Atlantic Arican diaspora) to tell the whole story. Much o the

collection also depends on the castle and the sea as symbols in the dis-

course o slavery. Te images that recur are largely visual and the mood

that permeates the world o the poems is one o gloom, horror andunspeakable inhumanity. Te poems are cast in the narrative mode and

evoke various scenarios and summon the various categories o people

that were involved in slavery. Te scenarios that eature in the collection

include capture scenes, the slave market, movement o chain gangs, the

branding o slaves, the inner chambers o the castle, journeying on the

sea and the agony o relatives o the enslaved.

Te castle and the sea are the most important images in Cape CoastCastle, and both are thoroughly demonized. Te castle is a torture

chamber, an indecent grave and an arrogant monument that conceals

the atrocities o its interior by outwardly appearing white. But it also

represents a history. As Eclipse reveals:


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

sonages that relate to it in various parts o the continent. Tese include

Olaudah Equiano, who was captured rom Igboland in what is now

eastern Nigeria, and Sengbe Pieh, a man o Mende origin rom what is

now Sierra-Leone, who led the amous Amistad Revolt. Pieh represents

the valiant Aricans who resisted slavery and regained their reedom. His

story continues to inspire others because he searched everywhere/

Looking or reedom in everything/ He ound it on deck in a spike (21).

Te poet retains Sengbes original name, as opposed to Joseph Cinge,

which was imposed on him, to celebrate his valour and assert his human-

ity. And in a bid to suggest that slavery devalued its victims, Pacotille,

a poem set in Ethiopia, itemizes the articles or which Aricans were

exchanged: 13 beads o coral/1/2 a string o amber/ 28 silver bells/ 3

pairs o bracelets (34). Equiano: A Mothers song recreates the agony

o a mother who could not be placated: Tey snarled him like a beastly

thing/ ook him washed out in streams o shy swarm/ Scaled and sold

him, my ute song/ Where his mother can never reach him/ My body is

streaked with red clay/ I will not be consoled (66).

Much as Cape Coast Castletells the story o trans-Atlantic slavery, it

does not go beyond recreating incidents and experiences that relate to

the ordeals associated with it rom the point o capture to the journey

on the seas. Tis is at best hal o the story o slavery; it complements the

second hal that is told on the other side o the Atlantic. Te strength

o the poems derives largely rom their imagery, even though a certain

measure o incoherence requently impedes its eectiveness. But thesense o gloom and agony that denes the world oCape Coast Castleis

unmistakable. Te poet-persona is able to sustain the emotional involve-

ment o the average reader in events that he retrieves rom the archives

o popular memory by adopting images that use haunting precision

with empathy. Tis is evident in Scarication which attempts to re-

capture the branding o enslaved Aricans: sword slashed the greening

esh/ Maame held on/ Te gap was not me/ But the word touched theearth in me/ Saturated wind with a howling/ My hanging will would not

let go. Te poem ends on a similar note: Maame chased ngers/ Over

the route o the knie/ Her ace shone/ Te scar is hers, all hers/ Just as

I am too (37).


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V.AncesttralLogic and Caribbeanblues: Te Cartography of Blackness

AncestralLogic and Caribbeanbluestakes its title in part rom laresistencia

cultural de negro en America Latina: logica ancestral y celebracion de la

vida by Muamba ujibikile,7 a Catholic priest o Zairean origin that

Anyidoho encountered in the Dominican Republic in the early 1990s in

the course o a ten-day visit to the country and Cuba, a trip that inspired

many o the poems in the collection. Te rest o the poems were also in-

spired by the many journeys he made at the time. Anyidoho reveals that

the poems were written at a period when I was doing a loto travelling back and orth. I spent quite a bit o time in

the United States and even here in Ghanabeing involved

in PANAFES, being involved in the Du Bois Centre, and

other programmes we organised were connected with Pan-

Aricanism. (Conversation 7)

Some useul insights that IntroBlues, the introduction to the collec-

tion, provides complement these reections:

Tere is a journey we all must make into our past in order to

come to terms with our uture. In the last decade or so I have

journeyed into various spaces o the world. And everywhere I

go I must conront dimensions o mysel that I did not know

were there. Tere is something o my story carved into every

tombstone o the world, something o my story enshrined inevery monument and every anthem ever erected in the spirit o

endurance. (xi)

Te collection reads almost as a travelogue because most o the poems

in it respond to situations that the poet encountered in various parts o

the Arican world, rom continental Arica to the New World. But the

poems do not stop at representing various spheres o the black world;

they chronicle his eorts at cementing bonds among black peoples andproject his concern about what he describes as our history o pain and

endless ragmentation (xi). A way to appraise the work is to see it as a

poetic rendering o a journey o discovery that is a reverse orm o the

homeward journey that diasporic Aricans normally embark upon in


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

a bid to discover their roots in Arica. In this sense AncestralLogic and

Caribbeanbluesattempts to map the black world.

Far rom romanticizing the black condition, the collectiondispassion-

ately reects on the condition o black people. It does not ascribe all their

woes to the actions and conspiracies o outsiders. It is divided into three

main parts that are separated by two pauses, giving the impression that

it aspires to a perormance. Parts One and wo, CaribbeanBlues and

AncestraLogic are particularly relevant to the concern o this study.

Anyidohos response to the labelling o people o Arican descent in the

Dominican Republic as Indios, despite the act that very many Arican

practices survive among them, is a critique o an ocial denial o the

Arican identity in this context. In Te aino in 1992, he appraises

this suppression as a way o perpetuating the elimination o identities

and peoples in the West Indies, starting with the Arawaks. Te turbu-

lent seas in the region then synchronize with the turbulent memory

o the taino/ And a hurricane o Arawak sounds (3). In Republica

Dominica the paradox that governs the Arican presence becomes ap-

parent as the survival o Arican drumming and dance traditions in the

Fiesta de Palos negate the ocial inscription o their identity. Te irony

that denes their identity is worth considering. On the one hand, Te

census oce undresses your skin/ peels your veins/ and dilutes your

blood Dispossessed o your ancestry/ your BlackNess/ Dissolves into

vague regions/ o the Indios Myth (8). On the other hand, On the esta

grounds/ AncestralLogic reclaims/ lost dimensions/lost dimensions o theSoul// Each ace a mask/ o agony overwhelmed/ by joy o lie hatched/ in

rituals o re-/Birth/ in StormFields o Cane Sugar &/ Death (9). Te act

that the same cultural maniestations animate Christian worship without

being acknowledged makes the ocial position ridiculous:

Outside the Church

A group perorms the ResurrectionDance.Te Drums reconstruct oundations o lost HomeLands.

Te voice o the BaKongo

Rise deep into a sky silenced

By its own lack o creative ruth. (10)


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Te gure o a tarantula with dis-/crepancies and dis-/jointed limbs

provides an insightul metaphor or the situation under review, leading

the poet-persona to appropriate it as the Pitiless and venomous/ image

o historys dis-/tortions/ o our urious Race (11). But the present

in Haiti or the Arican people is not any better as poverty and the

dislocation o basic social institutions stare the discerning in the ace.

Te memory o the heroic resistance o the past reveals the contrast

between the promises o the Haitian Revolution with the impotence o

the present. Tis has made breadwinners out o teenagers who have lost

athers to the sugar elds:

Tese are the children

O Macandal and oussaint

O Dessaline and Olivoro Mateo

But ancestral trophies

are no valid collateral

For the new industrial enterprise. (6)

But i the heritage o the Haitian heroes has been lost, the Cuban

dream has survived in the ace o incredible negative propaganda. Cuba

then becomes a symbol o hope and the possibilities o deance. It will

then be improper to see the Arican diaspora as a landscape o rus-

tration and ailure so long as the Cuban story inspires hope. Ater ex-

periencing the splendour o its landscape, the glory o its history and thejoy o reunion with the Aro-Cuban world, the poet-persona, comes to

appreciate the spatial gul between continental Arica and her diasporas

on the one hand and that among Arican diasporic communities on the

other. His dream o an integrated global Arican community comes to

a climax in HavanaSoul where he envisions a Pan-Arican air route

to counter the memory o the Middle Passage and link up the Arican

world: rom Ghana to Havana to

Guyana

And and on and on to Savannah in Georgia o the deep deep South.

With AricanaAirways we can renavigate the Middle Passage,


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74

Oyen iy i Okunoye

clear

the old debris and reshen the waters with iodine and soul-

chlorine.

And our journey into Soulime

will be

Te distance between the Eye and the Ear (16-17)

Te shortening o distance that the poem envisions is a metaphor

or linking up the black world so as to symbolically reverse the damage

that the history o slavery did to the sense o oneness o the people.

Earthchild, demonstrates the sense in which the cultural unity o

global Arica is not in doubt based on a shared musical heritage which

amazingly survives in the various languages that Aricans now sing, sug-

gesting (as the rerain to the poem states) that: those who took away

our Voice/Are now surprised/ Tey couldnt take away our Song (22). Te

metropolitan space in the major cultural hubs in the black diaspora must

take the credit or conserving values that survived the Middle Passage:

And in all the alleyways o old London and Paris and

Lisbon

And in all harlemways o New York Chicago New

Orleans

In Kingston-Jamaica Havana in Cuba Atlanta in Georgia

On Vodoun shores o Haiti our Haiti Oh Haiti!...

you will nd ootprints running backways

into lives once lost to sharp rhythms o Panthers greed

lives all lost to cold embraces o Atlantics waves. (21)

AncestralLogic and Caribbeanbluesdoes not construct any articial

sense o harmony, solidarity and justice in the Arican world. Neither

does the poetry present contemporary Arica as a terrestrial paradise.Santro Anoma,8 which expresses solidarity with Jack Mapanje, de-

tained by the despotic regime o Kamuzu Banda, reveals the travails

o visionary intellectuals in contemporary Arica. Harare Blues also

decries the neglect o veterans o the Zimbabwean war o independence


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75


long ater the birth o the nation. But while the poetpersona lends the

less active segments o the Arican diaspora a voice, Lolita Jones, the

poem that articulates the sense o hurt and betrayal that many Arican-

Americans nurse against their Arican kindred, is made very dramatic.

Apart rom denouncing the complicity o some Aricans in the enslave-

ment o ellow Aricans, it also vindicates Nkrumah, whose legacy has

been a subject o debate and controversy in Ghana, or giving diasporic

Aricans a sense o belonging in the homeland. By drawing attention

to this lingering sense o mistrust and vindicating Nkrumahs Pan-

Aricanist legacy,9 the poem seems to suggest that genuine unity cannot

thrive among black peoples until they address the mutual reservations

they harbour about one anotherwhether arising rom genuine claims

or stereotypical perceptions:

Long ago your People sold ma People.

Ma people sold to Atlantic Storms.

Te Storms rst it took away our Voice

Ten it took away our Name

And it stripped us o our Soul.

Since then weve been pulled pushed

kicked tossed squeezed pinched

knocked over stepped upon and spat upon.

Weve been all over the placeAnd yet

We aint got nowhere at all.

Tats why when the Black Star rose

I ew over to nd ma Space

And aint nobody like this Brother

Who gave me back ma Soul. (28)o read Lolita Jones as inscribing dissension and ragmentation

is to misread it. Te poem is a rank and sincere outburst which pas-

sionately presents a quest or true reconciliation in the Arican world.

Anyidoho seeks to invent bases or Arican unity in Children o the


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76

Oyen iy i Okunoye

land: A Sequence or Arican Liberation,10 his most important Pan-

Aricanist poem. Robert Fraser considers it [t]he centrepiece o [the]

collection (371). Te poem celebrates a shared dream o Arican

reedom and constructs a common vision rom the travails and struggles

or sel-determination in the our regions o the continent. It invents a

common image o Arica rom the charm o her physical and cultural

geography and the courage she has demonstrated in withstanding vari-

ous intrusions and crises. Te second movement o the poem starts on

this note:

WE are the Children o the Eastern Lands.

the lands o the Rising Sun.

Once so long our hopes were ambushed

by the Children o the Panther

But by the ghting skills o our warriors

We broke the Panthers jaws and pride.

oday we old our dreams gently in our arms.

Like the rit Valleys o our ancient lands

Our roots cut deep into the bosom o our Earth

As in the other sections, the closing section inscribes hope and pos-

sibilities o progress:

Our lands beauty is larger than the dream o praise singers

Our hopes rise deep rom the bosoms o our Earth

And touch the very orehead o the Sky.

From the mountain glories o our Eastern lands

We come to you with the victories the worries o our People:

We are the Children o the Eastern Lands. (43)In sum, this paper demonstrates the sense in which a trans-national

black identity in the poetry o Ko Anyidoho and Kwadwo Opoku-

Agyemang operates within the discourse o shared cultural memory. It is

no surprise that the two poets limit their ocus to the trans-Atlantic, even


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77


though they are conscious o the act that the Arican diaspora is global.

Te act that they explore the trans-Atlantic probably demonstrates an

awareness that, apart rom being the dominant segment o the black di-

aspora, it is also immediately associated with the Ghanaian experience.

Teir works are signicant because they recognize the possibility o draw-

ing inspiration and challenges rom the diverse realities that have shaped

the (dis)location o black peoples and their conditions in the world today.

In this sense, they dispense with the wild dream o an ingathering in the

Zionist ashion or a desire to terminate a sense o Arican diaspora. Teir

alternative vision advocates the linking up o various segments o the

black world as a necessary act o collective sel-apprehension, conscious

o the act that the sense o collective denition o Aricans peoples in

their various locations cannot be divorced rom their histories.

Notes

Tis paper was originally presented at the 32nd Annual Conerence o the

Arican Literature Association held at La Pame Royale Hotel, Accra, Ghana,rom May 17 to 21, 2006.

1 Ghana was known as the Gold Coast until independence.

2 Te constitution o the Convention Peoples Party clearly stated this as part o

the partys maniesto. In addition, Nkrumah made the pursuit o a ree and

united Arican nation his dream. Te Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute

in Winneba was to eectively propagate this consciousness and ensure its suste-

nance within the Ghanaian intellectual culture.

3 Notable among these are W.E.B. DuBois, Maya Angelo, Richard Wright andKamau Braithwaite.

4 Te conerence attracted thirty-one delegates rom various places: the United

States, West Indies, Britain, Canada, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

5 Apart rom his scholarly interest in the legacy o slavery in West Arica, Anyidoho

has travelled extensively in the Arican diaspora and is actively involved with

institutions and events that promote a shared Arican heritage. He is on the

Management Board o the W.E.B Du Bois Centre or Pan-Arican Culture in

Arica. He has also been involved in PANAFES in addition to serving as the

Director o the Arican Humanities Institute which is also based in Accra.6 Te essay that serves as introduction also appears as an essay entitled Cape Coast

Castle: Te Edice and Metaphor in FonomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian

Literature, Teatre and Film.

7 Anyidohos encounter with the priest at a seminar was to inuence his attitude

to the ocial denial o the Aricanness o people o Dominican Republic. In


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Oyen iy i Okunoye

spite o the act that they are not recognized as Arican, but as Indios, ancestral

logic plays itsel out by revealing itsel vibrantly in their dances and music in

which Anyidoho saw the rigour and vibrancy associated with spirit possessionin continental Arica.

8 Te social burden that the modern Arican writer bears necessitated drawing on

the idea o the mystery bird in Akan mythology called Santro Anoma.o take

it home is to bring misortune, while leaving it in the bush will amount to losing

a treasure. Tis is a way o suggesting that modern Arica cannot do without the

writer.

9 Anyidohos eort in this poem is better appreciated in relation to a similar at-

tempt at enacting an imaginary trial o Kwame Nkrumah in which various

witnesses are summoned to testiy or or against Nkrumah and his legacy in a

poem entitled In the High Court o Cosmic Justice in an earlier collection,

Earthchild.

10 Te Ghana Commission or Children commissioned the writing o the poem.

Children rom schools in Accra were selected or the perormance. Each o them

held the ag o the country they represented. But they also appeared in groups

along regional lines. Ater stating the shared experiences in the our regions o

the continent that they represented, each o them stepped out again to introduce

the country he/she represented. Te proper way to appreciate the poem is tosituate it within the tradition o poetry perormance in Ghana.

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Documents

Pan-Africanism and Globalized Black Identity in the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho