Broken, Rootless and Diffracted (not necessarily in this order)

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Oh where do I begin?

All families are dysfunctional.
I came to embrace this when I first attempted One Hundred Years of Solitude as a naive 21-year-old.
There is nothing wrong with that, that is what makes each family unique, that is what BINDS family members together.

That is also the premise of this book.

Each member of the Sai family is broken in their own way. Selasi started with Kweku - after all, he dies. His death brings his scattered, diffracted family members together, so of course he gets to tell his story first. Then the others came tumbling one after another: the estranged love of his life, his ex-wife Folasade, surgeon son Olu, the ridiculously beautiful sulky Taiwo, her artistically successful twin brother Kehinde and last but not least, the baby - Sadie.

I must say that I enjoyed guessing, discovering each one of their deepest fear, with the twins silent secret being the most physically devastating of all. Selasi did a good job suspending the tension as the story moves back and forth in time, places and characters. However, her flair of "poetic" language is unnecessary most of times - it just makes the story difficult to fathom. Several times, I found myself wondering what the heck is Kweku/Fola/Olu/Taiwo/Kehinde/Sadie trying to say?

With that, came another "problem" for me.

I didn't feel like each character is given their individual voice. It feels monotonous at times - it is like the same person is telling the story, the same story at that, only in different forms of suffering.

In general, I think Selasi offers a fresh depiction of the migrants' story, of rootlessness and the quest for a ground, a home to call one's own. This is a worthy work of such a young author.



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