Ghana Must Go

A masterpiece of text, not of story. Perhaps it's a sign of success for the next wave of immigrants (because this is very much an American novel, which is neither good nor bad) to get the same exact story - the all-American family therapy of unspoken things revealed - as the previous ones did. And it's not a bad or undeserving story as such. Just, y'know, same old same old, only with a different spin.

Selasi's prose is a marvel - one long rap in 12/8, ta-TA-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta-TA! - that's just as enthralling as when I saw her do a reading last year and realised I had to read this book. But at some point, despite myself, I start thinking it's a little too much. The voice never changes, never falters, just keeps the same rhythm no show more matter what (and I find myself trying to write the same meter, the beat still pounding the back of my head). It's a good song, just overproduced; a Coltrane yet to find out what notes not to play. show less

Almost scary good - the kind of book that leaves you fervently hoping the writer has more of this caliber in her. The story of Kweku's death and the impact it has on Fola and their children works on more levels than my brain can hold - from illustrating how the things we run from never leave us to showing the power of recollection to create change to melodrama to political history. It's a wonderful book.

Ghana Must Go contains some of what you’d expect in leafing through it in a bookstore, revealing the cultures in Nigeria and Ghana, the hardships in growing up there, and the difficulties of coming to America from there. It tells of all these things, but never in an “oh boo hoo” way, and at the same time, the book transcends the specifics, as all great books do. It’s about a family that’s fallen apart, of love lost, regret, and the effect it had on four children, each uniquely talented, and each uniquely damaged. And forgetting their ancestry, regardless of that, the descriptions of the family dynamic and the perspectives of each member felt spot-on and insightful, true to any family.

I won’t spoil the story, but for the show more framework, a doctor collapses, dead at the age of 57. He had left his wife and four kids fifteen or sixteen years earlier, when they ranged in age from eighteen to four. The family’s history and what happened from that point is then revealed in a non-linear way in snippets. Selasi’s writing style is at once both reserved and like cool spring water flowing downhill, running and dancing as it goes, and it’s an impressive first book.

Quotes:
On how events in Africa are viewed, this had my skin tingling:
“She sensed the change immediately, in the tone people took when they learned that her father had been murdered by soldiers; in the way that they’d nod as if, yes, all makes sense, the beginning of the Nigerian civil war, but of course. Never mind that the Hausas were targeting Igbos, and her father was a Yoruba, and her grandmother Scottish, and the house staff Fulani, some Indian even. Ten dead, one an Igbo, minor details, no matter. … it didn’t matter, [they] somehow believed that it was natural, however tragic, what had happened. That she’d stopped being Folasade Somayina Savage and had become the native of a generic War-Torn Nation. Without specifics. … Just some war-torn nation, hopeless and inhuman and as humid as a war-torn nation anywhere, all war-torn nations everywhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ they’d say, nodding yes in agreement, as one says I’m sorry when the elderly die, ‘that’s too bad’ (but not that bad, more ‘how these things go’ in this world), in their eyes not a hint of a surprise. Surely, broad-shouldered, woolly-haired fathers of natives of hot war-torn countries got killed all the time?”

On being damaged, this one gave me goosebumps:
“And what happens to daughters whose mothers betray them? They don’t become huggable like Sadie, Taiwo thinks. They don’t become giggly, adorable like Ling. They grow shells. Become hardened. They stop being girls. Though they look like girls and act like girls and flirt like girls and kiss like girls – really, they’re generals, commandos at war, riding out at first light to preempt further strikes. With an army behind them, their talents their horsemen, their brilliance and beauty and anything else they may have at their disposal dispatched into battle to capture the castle, to bring back the Honor. Of course it doesn’t work. For they burn down the village in search of the safety they lost, every time, Taiwo knows. They end lonely. Desired and admired and alone in their tents, where they weep through the night. In the morning they ride, and the boys see them coming. And think: my, what brilliant and beautiful girls. Hearts broken, blood spilled. Riding on, seeking vengeance. This a most curious twist in the plot: that the vengeance they seek is the love of another, a mother-like lover who will not betray. At the thought she laughs harder. To think of her lover, his scarf and his sweatpants, his motherly smile. And his wife and his children. Prepackaged betrayal. A foregone conclusion.”

On dreamers:
“They were doers and thinkers and lovers and seekers and givers, but dreamers, most dangerously of all.
They were dreamer-women.
Very dangerous women.
Who looked at the world through their wide dreamer-eyes and saw it not as it was, ‘brutal, senseless,’ etc., but worse, as it might be or might yet become.
So, insatiable women.
Un-pleasable women.
Who wanted above all things what could not be had. Not what they could not have – no such thing for such women – but what wasn’t there to be had in the first place. And worst: who looked at him and saw what he might yet become. More beautiful than he believes he could possibly be.”

On making love:
“His chest was still heaving against her, an hour, two hours. Moving slowly, and deeply, a dive. Downward and downward, until she was aching. ‘Enough,’ she said softly. He came, then he wept.
This was a man, she had felt, one could live with, build a life with, whatever “a life” might yet mean: who gave all to the living, with deep trembling breathing, his life to protecting the living from death. Though he knew it was futile. The way he made love, as if now were forever, gone deaf to the rest, as if breathing were music and hovels were ballrooms and all that they needed to do was to dance. It was this that convinced her despite his low wages for nearly two decades and everything else, that her husband made love like a man who loved life. That he put up a fight where she conceded defeat.”

On stoicism:
“So if ever the odd memory returned to him, caught up to him, billowing forward from behind him like tumbleweed in wind, he would feel only distance, the uncoverable distance, deeply comforting distance, and with it a calm. A calm understanding of how loss worked in the world, of what happened to whom, in what quantities. Never hurt. He didn’t add it all up – loss of sister, later mother, absent father, scourge of colonialism, birth into poverty and all that – and lament that he’d had a sad life, an unfair one, shake his fists at the heavens, asking why. Never rage. He very simply considered it, where he came from, what he’d come through, who he was, and concluded that it was forgettable, all. He had no need for remembering, as if the details were remarkable, as if anyone would forget it all happened if he did. It would happen to someone else, a million and one someone elses: the same senseless losses, the same tearless hurts.”

On suffering, perhaps the opposite of the above:
“She whispers this passionately, with no trace of sympathy, overcome by the possessiveness one feels for one’s suffering, the aggressive insistence on the suffering’s uniqueness, in nature and depth and endurance over time.” show less

Is this another tortured tale about the disintegration of a family or is it more? The fact that I'm still thinking about it 24 hours after the last page was turned instead of jumping right into my next book, leads me to the second conclusion. I almost abandoned it in the first 75 pages while Kweku Sai lies dying in his garden of a heart attack. The author's confusing hodgepodge of words captures Kweku's disoriented state of mind and the dismay of the family he left behind many years ago, but it was exhausting work untangling the jumble of thoughts and feelings she conveys. However, I'm glad I stuck with it to see the picture of a man who left Ghana to become a successful doctor in America develop into a story of love that withstands show more shame and sorrow.

Reading this book takes concentration and patience. The story not only jumps from Africa to the immigrant experience in America and then back to Africa, but it is written in a poetic style that is sometimes difficult to follow. It is most definitely a literary novel. But don't let that scare you! The second half of the book shines as the fractured family comes together to remember their patriarch. Long held secrets are revealed and wounds begin to heal when they travel to Ghana, the homeland that Kweku's four children never knew, and rediscover the connection to their past and to each other. show less

I was surprised that my Around the World for a Good Book selection for Ghana turns out to have a good portion of the narrative set close to home in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Selasi's novel is a story of immigration, family, the long term ramifications of choices made, and an attempt to peer beyond the stereotypes of Africa and Africans.

The novel is set around the family of Kweku Sai, long isolated from one another, coming together in Ghana for his funeral. Kweku immigrated to America where he became a celebrated surgeon, but after being unjustly fired, the great shame causes him to leave his family and return to Ghana. His wife Fola was a law student who gave up her career to support Kweku, and faces difficult choices when forced show more to raise 4 children on her own. The eldest son Olu follows his father into medicine, but his father's abandonment leaves him fearful of commitment. The sister-brother twins Taiwo and Kehinde bear the scars of being sent to live with Fola's brother in Nigeria after Kweku's departure and the sexual abuse they suffered there. The youngest child Sadie didn't know her father at all and until shortly before the main narrative begins had been very close with her mother. All of their stories are told in extended flashbacks intertwined with the present day story.

This is a heartbreaking and harrowing novel and should come with a big trigger warning. It unfortunately tends toward the melodramatic although there is honesty in the family dynamics portrayed. Thankfully, this is also a story of redemption and healing, although it is still hard to not feel unsettled after reading. show less

Very very good: portraits of believable, flawed characters and their interactions with each other. Beautiful, descriptive writing. Everything perhaps wrapped up too neatly at the end, but at the same time, this is the sort of book where everything gets to wrap up neatly, with enough open-endedness to not make the ending feel cheap. Looking forward to reading more books by this author!

These characters' heritage lingers in the background until brought to the forefront when the family comes together in the final act. However, Ghana Must Go never feels like 'an African novel'. More than a simple immigrant experience, more than a depiction of struggle and success, the novel explores the most relatable of all themes: family.

This reader with four older siblings found the complicated inter-relationship between Kweku's four children particularly well-crafted. Selasi's prose floats from the page as effortlessly as the shifts in time period and character's point of view. At times the novel is an elaborate piece of poetry. Fractured sentences and run-on thoughts comfortably nestle within the same paragraph.

A very mature work show more by a debut novelist, fully deserving of all the praise it will undoubtedly receive in awards season.

(Review of ARC provided by Penguin Books via a First Reads giveaway) show less