Sankofa

In these chapters, Anna’s quest to redefine her identity becomes clearer, especially when she begins to acknowledge the many aspects of inequality that have always permeated her marriage to Robert. Her role as Robert’s wife subsumed her identity, and his more confident personality deeply overshadowed her own. In the aftermath of their marriage’s breakdown, she is living alone for the first time and facing an uncertain future that is made more daunting because she doesn’t have a strong sense of self. By making key decisions to satisfy her own desires, Anna takes the first steps toward reshaping her identity as an individual. For the first time in decades, she separates “the real Anna” (80) from her longtime persona of Anna Graham, wife of Robert and mother of Rose. Finally left to reconnect with her own desires and satisfy old curiosities about her origins, she finds herself with the space to deeply reflect on her own needs, independent of her husband and daughter; thus, her desire to learn about and meet her father comes to represent her preoccupation with her Diverse Racial Heritage and the Search for Identity.

Anna’s determination to seek her father out is therefore a testament to the importance of her heritage, and this dynamic is further emphasized in Chapter 9, when Anna asserts that Robert’s personality is “inherited, along with all [his] other ideas” (73), from his father. This statement clearly highlights her unspoken speculation that much of a person’s identity is derived from their cultural inheritance, which is most often transmitted through the attitudes and behaviors of a person’s parents or caregivers. This passage implies that Robert is who he is because he has never had to question whether he belongs in the spaces he occupies. Though he likely doesn’t recognize it himself, his race and heritage play a large role in his identity, but because he is a white man and is therefore commonly assumed to occupy the “default” position in a society fraught with racism, he has never had to experience the constant evidence of prejudice that Anna has. Consumed with lingering uncertainties over her complex background, Anna hopes that finding Kofi will help her to claim her own metaphorical inheritance, along with a feeling of belonging and security.

With the discovery of Francis’s transformation into Kofi Adjei, Onuzo introduces the theme of Theoretical Politics Versus the Reality of Power. The man portrayed in Francis’s diary is a bright-eyed young revolutionary who earnestly believes in decolonizing Africa. He is increasingly willing to put his life on the line for the cause, as demonstrated by his foundation of the Diamond Coast Liberation Group. Though the actions taken by the group are controversial and sometimes violent, they are clearly still in service of Kofi’s vision of a liberated West Africa. Kofi’s fictional group parallels the many real-world Pan-African and African liberation movements that flourished throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Even after Kofi’s election, Bennet’s book paints a flattering vision of the man as a messianic leader poised to bring independence and wealth to his country. Indeed, Kofi does succeed in leading Bamana to a form of liberation. As described from Bennett’s admittedly biased perspective, Kofi truly believes in realizing a vision of Pan-African independence. However, Bennett’s glowing portrait of Kofi is a stark contrast to the Wikipedia article that details Kofi’s controversial 30-year term, which is marred with accusations of cruelty, corruption, and despotism. This trend is most aptly emphasized through Anna’s reflexive horror when she learns that Kofi was implicated in the murders of five students who demonstrated against his reelection. Thus, her research into the political personal of Kofi Adjei shatters the idealistic image she has built of Francis Aggrey.

It is also important to note that Kofi’s character is an amalgam of many real-life figures whose actions reflect the history of governmental corruption in postcolonial Africa. For example, leaders such as Mobutu Sese Seko and Kwame Nkrumah campaigned on promises of liberation and empowerment only to become autocratic leaders once elected to power. Within the context of the novel, Kofi appears to have followed this precise path, though Anna is still left to speculate on the details of the intervening years between his election and his later deposition, for something within that unrecorded time frame must have caused this fundamental shift in his political fortunes. Thus, as Anna struggles to reconcile the two different versions of her father, Onuzo establishes the motif of duality. Notably, after finding out about Kofi’s name change, Anna continues to use two names to refer to him; she uses Francis to refer to his years as a student, and Kofi to refer to his present-day self. Thus, she attempts to reconcile the apparent duality of his character by thinking of the young London-based student and the older revolutionary and political figure as two entirely different people. Ultimately, however, she will find this to be a misguided solution at best, and she will also have to face the duality implicit in her own diverse racial identity. Although she still has a long way to go, her journey to find herself will necessarily involve making peace with the concept of duality in herself and in her father.