Sankofa

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of racism.

Anna returns home to a message from her real estate agent; she has received an offer of 400,000 pounds on her mother’s flat. Anna is elated to realize that she can now afford the trip to Bamana. Anna visits her mother’s flat one final time. Walking through the bare rooms, she recalls her childhood. Though she had a good relationship with her mother, they clashed on the topic of race. Although Anna faced microaggressions and macroaggressions from white Londoners, Bronwen accused her daughter of being overly sensitive and told her to brush off the experiences. Bronwen’s insistence on ignoring everything to do with race and racism left Anna without “a sense of rightness, a sense of self” (104). Even as an adult, Anna could never speak to Bronwen about her childhood in a way that her mother could understand. Still, Anna acknowledges that Bronwen was a good parent.

Anna visits her Aunt Caryl at the nursing home where she has resided since receiving a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. In a rare lucid moment, Aunt Caryl approves of Anna’s plans to visit her father. Anna recalls that as a child, her mother and grandfather practiced a “farcical, almost sinister” (109) denial of her racial and ethnic identity.