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