In a workshop I attended in Legon sometime in 2019, a scholar suggested, “we have to become celebrities! That’s the only way our ideas can be disseminated to the general public” and faces around the table on which he sat, mine included, stared at him aghast. Perhaps underlying our discomfiture was the knowledge that he was right. But how were we to even begin? Buried under excess work load as it were and groomed to view with respectful contempt any semblance of popular culture? A few years have passed since that bold declaration and social media has begun to witness academic influencers and content creating lecturers. This venture is such — the dipping of a toe in the water.
The scene where Toby, played by LeVar Burton, is repeatedly flayed by a whip as he hangs from a tree with his legs barely touching the ground is one which strongly symbolizes the struggle of the African subject in America to assert a certain level of agency over their display of identity. The above scene, culled from the popular T.V. series “Roots,” set during and after the era of slavery in America, which featured John Amos and LeVar Burton and aired on the ABC network in 1977, later remade in 2016, is an apt introduction for the paper: “Negotiating Black Identity: The Roots of Homegoing.”
The paper explores identity on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion. These are often times tied to a specific place and find expression in definitions of culture; suggesting location as a necessary component of culture and by extension, a major influence on identity. Using the postcolonial lens, the paper takes as its study texts: Roots by Alex Haley, on which the T.V. series is based, and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.