The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

The protagonist often reflects on his memories of growing up in the colonial era in Ghana. He tells a striking story of going with a friend to a golf course estate in the “white men’s hills” (76) to steal mangoes and almonds growing overripe and unpicked on the trees. The green, lush grass is beautiful, the man remembers—clean, bright, and soft, the golf course figures almost like an Eden in his memory. Then he remembers that he and his friend were spotted and chased by Black guards and dogs hired by the white men who lived in gleaming bungalows in the hills. This combination of beauty and violence is a hallmark of the novel’s depiction of the colonial legacy.

Even though the novel takes place in post-independence Ghana, the colonial past is not so much past as present—the hills are still where the white men live, alongside Black Ghanaians who have chosen to adopt fake English accents and hyphenated English last names in order to assimilate. The leaders of the new Ghana—who had promised an end to British tyranny and to the “enslaving things from Europe” (149) have instead grown more and more similar to the old British colonizers.