Diaspora Blues

I have accepted I don’t belong.

The Canadians ask me “where are you from,” my complexion doesn’t grant me the access to participate freely in my nationality. The Ghanaians ask me “where are you from?” My accent doesn’t grant me the right to my roots.

For majority of my life I have been lost.

I don’t necessarily fit in anywhere. What is a home? Where will my soul feel at peace? Where will I be accepted? When will I have to stop fighting to simply exist?

I know my parents thought they were doing the best thing for me. Ghana failed them, so they didn’t want it to fail me.

I get it. Trust me, Canada seemed like a place where despite my race and vagina, I would have access to opportunities and success. They thought I could fulfil my dreams with ease, just like everyone else.

But racism, anti-Blackness, misogynoire breathes here too.

It blows its confusion, othering, hate, alienation, and destruction into my life subtly; an impact nonetheless.

No one told them I would have to be exceptional, and learn to have a work ethic only a team of 10 bodies can produce.

But I tried. Mediocrity can’t exist in my Black girl‘s body.

If the world must recognize me, if I want my humanity to be respected, just a little, I would have to be great.

But how can I be great when every chance anyone gets they deposit hate in me?

Between the gut-wrenching World Vision commercials, and hundreds of harmful tropes Black women have had to play in movies and series, the representation I needed for reassurance, for confidence, for a healthy self esteem all didn’t exist.

To be found, to find my true self, I have had to create spaces for myself and other Black women to be authentically Black, and a woman. To view my African-ness, my Blackness, and my womanhood as a positive, I have had to do the work for myself.

It’s hard to understand why black Americans, and the Black diaspora cling on to stories and narratives that make us proud, and happy to be Black.

I’m even lucky because I am Ewe, and kind of have access to my heritage. Imagine being ripped from your culture, traditions, spirituality, your people, you…

Would you not find every positive and powerful Black narrative necessary to finding yourself again?

Allowing the Black diaspora to fall in love with our roots however complicated it may be, is necessary.

We are no longer waiting to belong. We have decided to create our own spaces, we have decided to do the work to be black, powerful, and everything else they told us we can’t be.