In this thesis two recent travel narratives are discussed in which diasporic writers of African descent return to Ghana to work through both their personal problems of identity and exile and the...Show moreIn this thesis two recent travel narratives are discussed in which diasporic writers of African descent return to Ghana to work through both their personal problems of identity and exile and the collective trauma of slavery: Caryl Phillips’s The Atlantic Sound (2000) and Ekow Eshun’s Black Gold of the Sun (2005). Regarding Ghana as their ancestral homeland, Phillips and Eshun use the genre of the travel narrative to trace the physical, but more importantly psychological journey they undertake in hopes of resolving the problem of diasporic identity and feelings of non-belonging they have encountered in Britain and America. Their journey to Ghana, however, dismantles the idea of a homecoming and the concept of a whole sense of self. The silence and contradictions they find about the slavery past in Ghana force them to tell, and imagine, stories about well known historical figures instead, such as Jacobus Capitein, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Judge J. Waties Waring, as well as less known historical figures such as Ghanaian business man John Emmanuel Ocansey. These stories function partly as a means to affirm a sense of identity. Despite the fact that there is no real closure, both authors stress the necessity to remember and acknowledge the history of slavery. The journey to Ghana, and even more importantly writing the travel narrative, is a process of self-discovery; it is in the writing process that the authors, to some extent, come to terms with themselves and work through their ancestors’ slavery (and slave trading) history. They find a resolution in embracing a fluid identity.Show less
