JOIN USAfrican writer Taiye Selasi’s debut work ‘Ghana Must Go’, with its brilliant plot and characterisation, effectively mirrors conflict of identity. Revathi Siva Kumar writes
Taiye Selasi’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Ghana Must Go, has a brilliant plot, narrative and characterisation. Yet, the whole does not seem well integrated. To many readers, the novel fails to live up to the high expectations that have been created by critics and public ratings.
On the surface, the book unfolds a simple tale that is wrapped around a complex plot. Folasade Savage, a Nigerian, is abandoned by her Ghanaian husband, who has been fired from his job. Fola struggles to raise her five children single-handedly, but they get scattered and drift apart. In the end, all the family members visit Ghana, and begin to reunite emotionally.
There are many themes and sub-plots woven into the main strand, to the extent that it is a tad distracting to keep up with the intricate and innumerable twists. The title expresses a Nigerian phrase aimed at Ghanaian refugees arriving during the political unrest of the ‘80s. Even though the story is absurdly straight, the themes are complex: immigration, racial prejudice, an abandoned family, child abuse and a highly ambitious, talented and happy family, whose American dream goes sour, and then gets a fresh lease of life due to the sheer grit and will power of the characters. This issue, along with those of immigration, loving and leaving, is explored.
There is a stream-of-consciousness feel to the narrative. For instance: “Later in the morning, when the snow has started falling, and the man has finished dying, and a dog has smelled the death, Olu will walk in no particular hurry out of the hospital, hang up his BlackBerry, put down his coffee, and start to cry. He’ll have no way of knowing how the day broke in Ghana; he’ll be miles and oceans and time zones away (and other kinds of distances that are harder to cover, like heartbreak and anger and calcified grief and those questions left too long unasked or unanswered and generations of father-son silence and shame)…”
Hence, in an elaborately written tale, the plot is worn thin with musings, reflections, comment, philosophies, allusions, descriptions, metaphors and objective correlatives. It makes for a baroque, literary novel, which seems more about literature and less about realism. In the process, the author sacrifices opportunities to examine life in the raw. The prose glitters, flowing like a rope of diamonds:
“Folasade Savage on the run from a war. Kweky Sai fleeing a peace that could kill. Two boats lost at sea, washed on shore in Pennsylvania (“Pencil-wherever”) of all places, freezing to death, alive, in love. Orphans, escapees, at large in world history, both hailing from countries last great in the 18th century — but prideful (braver, hopeful) and brimful and broke — so very desperately seeking home and adventure, finding both. Finding both in each other, being both to each other, the nights that they’d toast warm Schweppes in cheap flutes or make love in the bathtub in moonlight or laugh until weeping: that he found what he hadn’t dared seek…”
Hence, much of the book is overwritten. Instead of seizing the opportunity to stop and open the door to the reader, letting her in on some of the deeply felt grief of the characters, the prose goes off into over-examination, giving the impression that the reader is supposed to stop and admire, rather than share some of the emotional experiences. In that sense, there is a touch of artificiality in the descriptions.
In the end, the reader leaves the book with an impression of having gone through large tracts of gorgeous prose, interspersed with brief passages of emotional intensity. Much of the action seems to be dragged down by the narrative as the story meanders at a number of places. The last few chapters pick up pace, and draw faster towards the inexorable reunion.
Meanwhile, while the psychological examination is acute and insightful, the characters themselves seem a bit stereotyped. As the Sais grapple with love, life and loss in general as well as with particular reference to the Afropolitans, the writer endows each one with incredible talent, as if that fact alone gives them more value as human beings: Fola is an accomplished lawyer who sacrifices her career for her husband’s, while the eldest boy, Olu, is an accomplished surgeon like his father. The next boy, Kehinde, is an art celebrity.
His beautiful twin, Taiwo, is a class topper as well as prodigious pianist. Sadie, the youngest, a Yale student, is a natural dancer with a photographic memory. There seems to be an over-emphasis on accomplishment as a way of defying limitations of race and prejudice, which ring false. But while these members are better, some of the peripheral characters appear to be incredibly stereotypical, such as Dr Michiko Yuki, who sacks Kweku from the hospital, and who behaves like “a Hong Kong mobstress”. Uncle Femi and Nike, who abuse the twins, stand out, but seem larger than life.
The book is a brave attempt to capture the voice of ‘Afropolitans’, or contemporary Africans, as coined by Taiye Selasi in an earlier essay in 2005. A whole generation of readers is eager to read about the Afropolitans, but the over-emphasis on accomplishment as a way of making headway in the world seems like a defensive, even defiant technique to justify their existence. Every one of the Sais is extraordinarily talented! At many points, the psychological exploration is overshadowed by the profiling of the characters in plot-driven situations.
Ultimately, Ghana Must Go is a good experience if the reader makes the effort to sift and make sense of the reams of prose, but it is not a compelling read.