For Ghana, I read Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo. According to the burb on the back of my volume, this book is a “prose poem” but I myself would describe it as “experimental literature that is a hybrid of prose and poetry.” Whatever the genre, I loved it.

This is the story of Sissie, who travels from Ghana to Germany as a student, and then questions why she left Africa and what she can learn from Europe. Aidoo alternates between prose and poetry in a way that I’ve never read, but it worked 110% and was such a lovely way to bring the reader into the narrator’s experience of being a black African woman in white Europe. As a writer myself, I was more than a little jealous with the way she was able to slide between prose and poetry and make it seem absolutely effortless.

When I was picking my book for Ghana, this book called to me–but I hesitated because the story is mainly set in Germany. When I created that graphic above, I prompted Midjourney to create a watercolor of a street scene in Accra, Ghana, because that was the place the author mentioned the most in regards to Ghana, but we only spent a few pages on the African continent. But I don’t regret picking this book! From Germany, Sissie was able to develop some strong ideas about conflicts between Africa and Europe, men and women, and the status quo and a desire to reform a rotten world. It was a very different and insightful perspective.

My highlighter was very busy as I read Our Sister Killjoy but this quote delivered the biggest gut punch:

Since so far, I have only been able to use a language that enslaved me, and therefore, the messengers of my mind always come shackled?

Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo pg. 112.

I still get chills rereading that. As a Ghanian, Aidoo wrote in English, but English was brought to her country by the British, who colonized Ghana during the scramble for Africa. My read around the world quest has me thinking a lot about language, and Aidoo added a new angle to how language affects our thoughts, our experiences, our ways of processing the world.

A lot of people recommended that I read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi for Ghana. That would have been another great pick (even if her family moved to the United States when she was about two years old); but my book club read Homegoing in 2018 so I took this opportunity to discover another Ghanaian author. I’m so glad I did. Aidoo’s work was challenging, lyrical, and thought-provoking and I’d love to read more of her work.

That said, Homegoing is an equally excellent pick! Seven years later, I still remember that my book club had a very lively discussion about it, and I feel the echoes of the agony and sorrow it evoked in my heart. Excuse me while I add Gyasi’s second novel Transcendent Kingdom to my TBR.