Sankofa

Published in 2021 by Catapult, Sankofa is the second novel by Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo. Sankofa tells the story of Anna Bain, the daughter of a white English woman and a Black West African man. In her 40s, Anna feels adrift after the recent loss of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage. After discovering that her father is the disgraced former prime minister of Bamana, Anna journeys to Bamana to confront him and seek answers about her identity. Along the way, Onuzo explores themes of diverse racial heritage and identity, contextual power, and the differences between the theory and practice of politics.

This guide refers to the 2021 digital edition of Sankofa.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain discussions and depictions of racism, enslavement, and the legacy of colonialism. This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Plot Summary

Anna Bain lives alone in London. Her mother, Bronwen, has recently died, and her adult daughter, Rose, lives away from home. Anna’s 20-year marriage to her husband Robert has recently been thrown into turmoil by his affair with a coworker. Now living on her own for the first time in decades, Anna struggles to reconstitute her identity beyond the boundaries of a marriage. Although Anna’s father is a Black West African man, Anna was raised solely by her white mother in England, and Bronwen failed to acknowledge or embrace Anna’s diverse heritage. Anna’s father, Francis Aggrey, is a Black man from the West African country of Bamana who came to London to study at a university. Francis returned to Bamana before Anna was born, and she has never known him.

While sorting through her mother’s belongings, Anna finds two hidden notebooks. The first is a diary that Francis wrote during his time in London in the 1960s, in which he details his experiences of racism from white Londoners and his subsequent initiation into an African student group comprised of left-wing, anti-colonialist activists. Francis’s diary also describes an illicit affair with Bronwen, during which time Anna was conceived. However, Francis left London without knowing that Bronwen was pregnant.

In the second notebook, Anna finds newspaper clippings that trace Francis’s journey into revolutionary politics. He broke off his university education and moved back to Bamana, where he began going by his Bamanian name, Kofi Adjei. As Kofi, he founded the Diamond Coast Liberation Group, a group of guerrilla fighters whose actions included the kidnapping of several English diamond mine owners in Ghana. After a brief stint in prison, Kofi was released back to Bamana, where he married and had several children. Soon afterward, he ran for office and became Bamana’s first prime minister. As prime minister, Kofi promised to bring wealth and independence to Bamana, hoping to sever the country’s colonial ties completely. He succeeded in liberating Bamana, but because he then held office for 30 years, many have come to consider his lengthy tenure a dictatorship. He is also implicated in several human-rights scandals, including the murder of five students who opposed his continuous rule. Kofi’s critics dub him “The Crocodile” for his allegedly ruthless ways.

Anna struggles to reconcile the Francis Aggrey who wrote the diary with his later persona of Kofi Adjei. She feels compelled to travel to Bamana and meet her father face-to-face in order to reconcile her cognitive dissonance over these two versions of him. To this end, she enlists the help of Adrian Bennett, a biographer who profiled Bamana during the first few years of Kofi’s rule, when hope for a utopian future still abounded. When she arrives in Bamana, Anna once again encounters differing attitudes toward Kofi’s leadership. The older generation of West Africans idolizes him, while the younger generation views him as a despot.

Kofi is initially dismissive of Anna’s claim to his paternity, but after secretly having a DNA test conducted on her, he accepts her as one of his children. Kofi invites Anna into the powerful Adjei family’s life of luxury. He also accompanies her through Bamana, eager to show off the progress that has been achieved under his rule. Anna is disappointed to find that Kofi is egotistical and unwilling to take criticism; she believes that he is no longer the same man he was when he wrote his London diaries. Anna comes to think of Francis and Kofi as two different people; in her mind, Francis is the courageous young outsider with whom she identifies, while Kofi is merely an out-of-touch and power-hungry old man.

As Anna’s confidence grows, she stands up to her father, criticizing his indulgent lifestyle and his disregard for the lives of his former constituents. Kofi continually sidesteps her criticism, instead encouraging her to bond with her half-siblings and to consider staying in Bamana permanently. He teaches her aspects of Bamanian culture and tells her that her Bamanian name would have been “Nana,” which means “queen.”

Anna discovers that Kofi is planning to run for prime minister once again. Frustrated by her inability to get through to him, she attempts to leave Bamana, but Kofi stages a mishap with her passport and causes her to be jailed for a night. He eventually has her bailed out, and they have a heated confrontation, which culminates in Anna’s realization that she cannot separate the identities of Francis and Kofi; they are the same person and are inextricably linked to one another.

On the morning after their fight, Kofi takes Anna to an elderly woman who conducts a traditional Bamanian ritual to induct her into womanhood. During the ritual, Anna has hallucinatory visions of her ancestors on both sides of the family and envisions them holding hands. When she realizes that her Bamanian name, Nana, is an anagram of her English name, Anna, she finally accepts the duality of her identity. Sankofa ends with Anna deciding to stay in Bamana indefinitely and making plans to invite Rose for a visit.