By Luso Mnthali for The Times
Nothing I have read recently by writers of African descent has captured the enterprising spirit and strength necessary for living in another part of the world like Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go does.
In this lyrical debut novel, Nigerian mother Fola and Ghanaian father Kweku Sai are ambitious African immigrants in Boston, US. In the Sai household, where Fola gives up the chance to go to law school and looks after the children while Kweku becomes a brilliant surgeon, everyone has a role.
The parents’ plans and outcomes are determined by their children – a not-uncommon immigrant tale. In a world that has regularly castigated Africans for being too poor, too lacking in one thing or another, the children tend to be the dream fulfilled.
Despite the parents’ good intentions, the Sais are slightly adrift, “a family without gravity”. Olu, the first-born son who looks like their beautiful mother, is brilliant all round. The first daughter, Taiwo, is a gorgeous near-replica of her mother’s own mother, who was half-Scottish. Her artistic twin brother is Kehinde, whose social ineptitude is made up for by his dazzling creations. Sadie, the baby, feels like she’s the odd one out. She’s not as beautiful, nor as talented as her siblings, and is bulimic.
The twins inherited startling beauty, strangely mesmerising hazel eyes, and the carefree attitude of those who know they were born talented. Both seem to move effortlessly through their lives. Or so everyone thinks.
This is in many ways a broken family, not only in the way Kweku leaves them and in the way Fola ends up being the sole caregiver of their children, but also in the ways the world shapes their experiences.
Olu becomes a surgeon like his father, and marries Chinese-American Ling. The examination of their marriage illuminates how damaging the weight of responsibility, of picking up the pieces, can be. Kehinde becomes a renowned artist, but hides from the world. Taiwo is embroiled in a scandal, and Sadie thinks she can hide her bulimia. Fola tries to cope, but is locked inside her unexpressed emotions. Meanwhile, Kweku dies far from them all.
The promise of the book lies in the impressive shaping of the lives of this family. Dreams are realised, but sometimes they are cruelly thwarted.
Memories and affection are withheld. The author hasn’t written a new story, and the endorsements from literary luminaries such as Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie don’t make the novel, or the novelist herself, shine brighter, but she stands on her own two feet, with a distinct and beguiling style of her own.
The unhurried release of memories, the fragmented storytelling – all this is key to the novel’s theme of displaced identity. The loveliness of the prose, and the lush and vivid descriptions of place – of the quality of light in Accra, the colour of the city – are all part of what makes Selasi’s novel brilliant. She asks the reader to travel over great distances, emotional and geographical, and over several decades, so that by the time the family arrives in Accra for their father’s funeral, you see how and why they are set apart.
Luso Mnthali is a contributor to Books LIVE.
- Ghana Must Go is published locally by Penguin Books South Africa
Book details
- Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
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EAN: 9780670919864
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