Sankofa

“I had enacted this scene several times in my youth. Young Anna walking into an affluent space, a jewelry store, for example, or a gallery. Cue side glances tracking my movement, nervous and on edge. I tried to explain it to my mother once. ‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ she said.”

As a woman with a diverse racial heritage, Anna finds it challenging to live in a predominantly white area, for she is keenly aware of how other people react to her presence. As a white woman, her mother Bronwen doesn’t understand this hyperawareness because she has never had to worry about discrimination. As a result, she interprets Anna’s difficulties as sensitivity on Anna’s part. This quote is emblematic of how Bronwen fails to understand and validate her daughter’s experience.

“‘Where are you from?’ a Rhodesian called Thomas Phiri asked when I got up to leave.

‘Diamond Coast,’ I said.

‘That’s a slave name. Named for what they stole from us.’

‘It’s the only one I know.’”

Names are a key motif in Sankofa, specifically the relationship between African names and the European names that replaced them during and after colonization. Here, Francis has the sobering realization that the only name he knows for his home region is one that was created by enslavers. This moment foreshadows his later decision to renounce the European part of his name.

“I want to cheer for young Francis. He would have taught me how to fight, how to make a fist and throw a punch. Not like my mother, who raised me to have nice manners no matter the provocation.”

One reason that Anna connects so deeply to the idea of Francis is that she projects onto him all the qualities that Bronwen lacked. As her Black parent, he would have understood the racism she faced and could have taught her how to respond in a way that empowered her rather than diminishing her sense of self.