When I did my reading around Africa project a few years back, I read a novel called Ghana Must Go. Now, I’m plugging away on my reading around the world project, and I finished another novel called Ghana Must Go. The title of both refers to the 1983 expulsion of Ghanaian migrants from Nigeria. Many of those forced to leave packed their things in inexpensive bags made of plastic woven into a plaid pattern, still widely used for inexpensive luggage. In the US, they seem to show up most often at laundromats.
In the novel by Taiye Selasi, a man named Kweku Sai leaves Ghana for the United States and becomes a surgeon. He marries, has four children, and plans to go back to Ghana as a wealthy conquering hero. However, he screws up and returns to Ghana in shame, leaving his family behind to figure out their lives.
The story opens with Kweku’s death. His family, now spread across the US and UK as well as Ghana, come together to reckon with his death, and we get the stories that caused the characters to make the choices that they did.
I loved this book. The characters are strong and the story is powerful. The narrative of American immigration, and the narrative of the American dream, is being able to conquer the world and have untold success that’s only possible in one slice of North America. That’s not true, of course, and the ways in which it is not true vary from family to family.
