Chap Summary

The chapter starts with Marjorie, the daughter of Yaw and Esther, visiting her grandmother Akua or “Old Lady” in Cape Coast, Ghana. Marjorie visits her grandmother every summer and they have a good relationship. In Ghana, Marjorie and her grandmother go to the beach and walk into the water like they do every summer. It was Old Lady’s way of reminding Marjorie where she truly belongs, which is Ghana. Marjorie’s grandmother also insisted Yaw and Esther send back Marjorie’s umbilical cord when she was born, so that she could put it in the water in Ghana. That way a part of Marjorie will forever be in Ghana. At the beach, Old Lady asks Marjorie about the stone that belonged to her before and had been passed down throughout multiple generations starting from Maame. The stone now belongs to Marjorie after her grandmother gives it to her.

Marjorie then returns to Alabama, where she lives with her parents. She is about to start high school and is expectedly nervous. Once she gets to high school, she has difficulty fitting in and experiences bullying and harassment by the other black girls in school because they feel she is not black in the same way that they are. They tease her and call her “white girl”. Marjorie quickly realizes that what it means to be black in America is different to what it means in Ghana. In Ghana being black simply meant having black skin; in America, being black could be the way you talked, the music you listened to, the books you read, etc. To cope with her loneliness in high school, Marjorie falls in love with reading and spends a majority of her time with books, longing for an emotional connection that she failed to find with her classmates in school. One day she meets a German boy named Graham, who she is infatuated by. They spend almost every day together and grow closer. Later they go on dates together and share a kiss. One day, Marjorie is asked to write and read a poem by her English teacher, Mrs Pinkston, for a black cultural event she was putting on. Mrs Pinkston tells Marjorie to simply tell her story in the poem.

As time passes, Marjorie gets information that her grandmother is sick.This news devastates Marjorie as she feels her grandmother is the only person who truly understands her. As a result, Marjorie begins to lose focus and talk less in school. After an incident in the cafeteria at school in which a white girl tells Graham that he should not be seen with a black girl, she leaves Graham. When Graham is easily persuaded to walk away from Marjorie and to not sit with her anymore in the cafeteria, Marjorie realizes that Graham is in fact not a loner or outcast like she is. Rather, he is the opposite and can fit in and blend in very easily because he is white, unlike her. Marjorie feels betrayed but does not want to dwell on it as she realizes she never really loved him anyway.

Later, at the assembly for Mrs. Pinkston's event, Marjorie reads the poem she wrote in front of two thousand people. Her poem is about the experience of being black in America and in Africa, and the divide she herself sometimes feels. Marjorie’s poem brings her father to tears. Nearing the end of the chapter, Marjorie and her parents get news that Old Lady has passed away in her sleep. Marjorie and her parents travel to Ghana for the funeral. They bury her in the mountains like Old Lady always wanted. At the burial Marjorie finally starts crying and wails out “Maame”, and her mother has to lift her off the ground. 

Character Analysis 

Majorie 

Majorie is the only child of Yaw and Esther. She loves to read and write, following in her father’s footsteps. Majorie is family-oriented and is close to her grandmother Akua especially, whom she calls Old Lady.She is an empathetic person who wants to experience other’s pain, especially the pain of her father and Old Lady.  She is conflicted about what “home” means as she travels between Alabama and Ghana. She does not fit in with the black kids at school in Alabama, but she also does not see herself living in Ghana. 

Old Lady 

“Old Lady” is the new nickname given to Akua after she had moved to Cape Coast from Edweso. 

Mrs. Pinkinston

Marjorie’s English teacher. She is one of the two Black teachers in a school of two-thousand students. She is a kind woman who encourages Marjorie to look deeper into reading and writing. 

Yaw

Marjorie’s father, who is now old. He was nearing the age of seventy when Marjorie was born. 

Esther 

Marjorie’s mother, who is very loving and supportive towards Marjorie. 

Graham

Marjorie’s crush who shares her love for reading. He is a German immigrant whose father works in the military and his mother is deceased. Graham is a kind boy, but is easily influenced as he cuts all ties with Marjorie once his father and the school told him that the relationship between Graham and Marjorie was “not appropriate.”

Ten-year-old local Ghanaian Boy

A local who tries to persuade tourists into visiting the Cape Coast Castle. 

Tisha 

A girl in Marjorie’s school in Alabama who bullies her by calling her “white girl”.

Major Themes and Symbols

Identity and Heritage 

Throughout this chapter, there are many references to Marjorie’s experiences that lead her to question her identity. These ideas also link to her family history and heritage. As the chapter begins, Marjorie is in Ghana visiting her grandmother, when a boy asks her whether she wants to visit the Cape Coast Castle, to which Marjorie replies, “I’m from Ghana, stupid. Can’t you see?” (264). This shows that though she is Ghanaian, one can still see her as a foreigner. Similarly, when she is in Alabama, her teacher Mrs. Pinkston tells her that she is black while Tisha tells her that she sounds like a white girl. This is where Marjorie realizes that in America, the term “white” is about the way a person speaks, while “black” is about the music that one listens to (269). However, in Ghana, you are whatever your skin color is. Marjorie's uneasiness about moving to Ghana is also something that is prevalent throughout the chapter, especially when she mentions to Graham that the people in Ghana can “smell” that she is different to them (278). Although her grandmother has told her many stories about her family and Marjorie visits Ghana every summer, she finds it hard to find her place there, showing how complicated identity can be in the postcolonial, globalized world. 

Family

Marjorie’s link to her family is another theme that is explored in this chapter. Marjorie wears Effia’s stone necklace, which shows how she associates herself with her family and heritage. When Marjorie recites the poem about her family's history and heritage, it demonstrates how her insight into herself has been shaped by her family's heritage and where she lives. At the end of the chapter, her grandmother Akua passes away, and at the funeral service, Marjorie is in tears and says “Me Mam-yee, me Maame. Me Mam-yee, me Maame” (283). The quote that Marjorie says translates to ‘mother’ in Twi, and the significance of this is that the Maame is the name of the first character in the family, through which the family tree is formed. 

Fire and Water

Fire and water are key symbols in this chapter. When Graham is playing with the lighter, Marjorie tells him to stop it because of her fear of fire that comes from her family heritage. The theme of water is also explored when Marjorie and Akua go to the beach. The chapter ends with Esther telling Marjorie that Akua would fly off to the cliffs, mountains, and then into the sea (283) which adds to the theme of water that is further explored in Marcus’s chapter, adding to the idea of Marjorie’s fire and Marcus’s water. 

Stone 

While Marjorie and Akua are at the beach, Akua asks Marjorie if she is wearing the stone. The stone itself is a key image throughout this chapter and the novel because it represents the family heritage and how the stone was passed on from generation to generation. 

Scars and Pain 

The image of scars and pain is important in this chapter since, at the beginning of the chapter, Marjorie notices her grandmother's hands where the scars were covered by wrinkles and how there was so much history in those scars. The scars on her father's and grandmother's hands were an important symbol of pain. This also links to the idea of Marjorie’s confusion in terms of identity, since she herself did not have scars, making her question her relation to her family heritage. 

Key Passages

Whenever her father or grandmother asked her about pain, Marjorie would say she had never known it. As a young child, someone had told her that the scars her father wore on his face and her grandmother on her hands and feet were born of great pain. And because Marjorie had no scars that resembled those, she could never bring herself to complain of pain. Once, when she was just a little girl, she had watched a ringworm on her knee grow and grow and grow. She’d hidden it from her parents for nearly two weeks, until the worm overtook the curve where thigh met calf, making it difficult for her to bend. When she’d finally shown her parents, her mother had vomited, and her father had snatched her in his arms and rushed her to the emergency room. The orderly who came to call them back had been startled, not by the worm, but by her father’s scar. She’d asked if he was the one who needed help. (265)

Marjorie recognizes at an early age that her family has suffered so much that they do not talk about it. Somewhere in her mind, she registers that her pain does not compare to theirs. She feels that if she did complain about something hurting, it would be an insult to their pain. This belief may be an impact of generational trauma in itself because she believes that her pain would invalidate the magnitude of their pain. She believes that she should not complain when hurt because her family has suffered much worse. While this might not be true – the suffering of others does not diminish one’s own pain –the orderly considers Yaw’s face to be the injury in question. At no point does Marjorie have reason to believe that her pain is grand enough to be a concern because the pain her father and grandmother have suffered are physically evident. It is noticeable pain and scarring that has impacted their lives. It is pain that was caused by something so horrible that it has changed the course of their lives. Consequently, Marjorie does not think that she has any reason to complain – even if her parents do not discourage her. This segment shows the internal recognition of the pain through the generations, and how Marjorie has altered herself to acknowledge it, even if no one has asked her to.

Marjorie had a sweet tooth reserved for chocolate. Her mother often joked that Marjorie must have been birthed from a cocoa nut, split open and wide. (266)

This is an example of dramatic irony in the book. As readers, we understand more about the family’s history than the characters do. This comment where Esther describes Marjorie’s love for chocolate as her being born from a cocoa nut is ironic because her great-grandfather, Ohene Nyarko, bought and planted cocoa nuts. While Marjorie and Esther do not know this history, we, the readers, know everything about the entire family. It is simply an ironic coincidence.

When she tried to answer their questions in Twi, they would say, “Speak English,” until now it was the first language that popped into her head. (266).

This quotation posits the internal changes Marjorie practices to succeed in America. In order to adjust to the American style of learning as a child, Marjorie learns to incorporate more English in her daily speech. Her parents ask her a question, and she tries to reply in English. They practice this until Marjorie thinks in English rather than in Twi. This line shows the many changes that immigrants experience and incorporate when assimilating to a new culture. While Marjorie is not recognizing a great change, she essentially loses her preference for Twi in order to fit in and excel in an American society.

“Our family began here, in Cape Coast,” Old Lady said. She pointed to the Cape Coast Castle. “In my dreams I kept seeing this castle, but I did not know why. One day, I came to these waters and I could feel the spirits of our ancestors calling to me. Some were free, and they spoke to me from the sand, but some others were trapped deep, deep, deep in the water so that I had to wade out to hear their voices. I waded out so far, the water almost took me down to meet those spirits that were trapped so deep in the sea that they would never be free. When they were living, they had not known where they came from, and so dead, they did not know how to get to dry land. I put you in here so that if your spirit ever wandered, you would know where home was. (268)

The two families are separated and spread across the world for generations. Many of the children do not know their parents, while many of the others lose their parents at a very young age. The families move and travel, and they lose themselves to the environment around them. Akua recognizes that they are lost. The spirits of their relatives do not know their clan; they do not know their family. The relatives no longer have an identity of a nation or of an originating culture. To prevent a loss of identity, Akua places Marjorie in the sea of the Gold Coast. By doing this, Akua ties Marjorie to the nation that she is from, allowing Marjorie to form a connection to Ghana and, more importantly, to her family. Akua does not want Marjorie to be lost in the same way that their ancestors are. In attempting to right the wrongs, Akua connects Marjorie to a family, a memory, and a country. Akua tells Marjorie of their family’s history, allowing Marjorie to hold the truth of their lives. This act ends the novel’s constant theme of separation on people’s lives. Unlike the other characters, Akua and Marjorie have learned as much as possible about their origin, so they are able to heal from the traumas that their family has faced.

Tisha and her friends called her “white girl,” Marjorie was made aware, yet again, that here “white” could be the way a person talked; “black,” the music a person listened to. In Ghana you could only be what you were, what your skin announced to the world. (269)

In Alabama, Marjorie realizes that she is not as openly accepted as she had been in Ghana. While she considers herself to be black, the girls at her school differentiate based on her voice. Marjorie, here, realizes that in order to be perceived as the “right type” of Black person, she will have to change herself even further so that she can fit into the stereotypes associated with black people. These standards differ to the standards in Ghana and Marjorie just begins to recognize that in this quotation.

“But I’m not African American,” Marjorie said. 

Though she couldn’t exactly read the look on Mrs. Pinkston’s face, Marjorie knew instantly that she had said the wrong thing. She wanted to explain it to Mrs. Pinkston, but she didn’t know how. She wanted to tell Mrs.  Pinkston that at home, they had a different word for African Americans. Akata. That akata people were different from Ghanaians, too long gone from the mother continent to continue calling it the mother continent. She wanted to tell Mrs. Pinkston that she could feel herself being pulled away too, almost akata, too long gone from Ghana to be Ghanaian. But the look on Mrs. Pinkston’s face stopped her from explaining herself at all.

“Listen, Marjorie, I’m going to tell you something that maybe nobody’s told you yet. Here, in this country, it doesn’t matter where you came from first to the white people running things. You’re here now, and here black is black is black” (273).

This quotation signifies the difference Marjorie herself sees between the black people at her school and herself. While many of her fellow students are African Americans in the sense that their ancestors had been displaced from Africa many years ago, Marjorie still has closer ties to Ghana. Her identity, unlike the African Americans, is tied into Ghanian culture and roots, while theirs is tied into the experiences and struggles their ancestors faced in America. Then, Marjorie expresses that she too felt like an akata, which expresses that she feels distant from her culture and homeland. This segment raises the idea of home and culture – where is home? How is one’s identity tied into their homeland? Marjorie no longer feels close to her culture, instead she feels foreign. She felt as though she, too, has been taken from her homeland. A point of note here is that Marjorie’s greatest tie to Ghana is her grandmother, Akua. Akua is the one teaching Marjorie how to return home. However, Marjorie currently no longer feels as close a connection to Ghana as she did earlier.

In the second half of this segment, Mrs. Pinkston tells Marjorie that the difference between “African American” and “Ghanian” did not matter because “black is black is black.” In the eyes of white people, Marjorie is perceived as black, and the differences between akata and Ghanian do not matter here. However, as regarded in the quotation prior, some black Americans do, in fact, differentiate – not on origin, but rather on whether or not a person does or does not fit in with the stereotypes and characteristics associated with black people.

The importance of this quotation is to highlight Marjorie’s confusion of “home.” Her disconnect to Ghana and her time spent in America is causing her to feel a distance from her homeland that is leading to a loss in identity.

“I mostly just feel like I don’t belong there. As soon as I step off the airplane, people can tell that I’m like them but different too. They can smell it on me” (278).

This quotation, like the two above, further explains how Marjorie feels a loss of connection to Ghana. Even if she returns to her homeland, the Ghanaians would recognize her as a foreign variation of a Ghanaians. Marjorie believes that even if the locals recognize her as Ghanaian, her experiences and her life in America would set her apart. Marjorie’s separation from her country is caused by her integration into American culture and society, which means that she no longer feels as close to Ghana as she did before. Moreover, the girls at Marjorie’s school and Mrs. Pinkston have contradictory views on Marjorie’s heritage and cultural identity. While the girls at school refer to Marjorie as being “white,” Mrs. Pinkston reminds Marjorie that she is considered African American regardless of her personal history. This contradiction leads to a conflict in how Marjorie perceives herself and her own cultural identity. She now feels too distant from her culture to consider herself as being truly Ghanaian.

She feared that the nightmares would come for her too, that she too would be chosen by the ancestors to hear their family’s stories, but the nightmares never came, and so, with time, her fear of fire had waned. But every so often she could still feel her heart catch when she saw fire, as though the firewoman’s shadow still lurked. (274)

This segment of the chapter expresses Marjorie’s fear that she would succumb to the same nightmares that had haunted her grandmother. While she may consider it an honor to learn more about her family, the possibility of the dreams causes her to realize a fear in which the firewoman would hurt her life as well. If read deeper, this segment also represents the idea of generational trauma that the novel explores. The family has been carrying the pain of their ancestors – the nightmares Akua saw were an exposure of all the ancestors’ histories and lives. Marjorie does not want the same pain to travel to her.

Split the Castle open,
find me, find you.
We, two, felt sand,
wind, air.
One felt whip. Whipped,
once shipped.
We, two, black.
Me, you.
One grew from
cocoa’s soil, birthed from nut,
skin uncut, still bleeding.
We, two, wade.
The waters seem different
but are same.
Our same. Sister skin.
Who knew? Not me. Not you. (282)

This poem is the highlight of the chapter on Marjorie. Her chapter builds up to the poem speech, and it is presented as a culmination of the entire novel up to that point. Her poem appeals to the conflict she feels split between Ghana and the U.S., but to the reader, it is a poem about the history of her family. The audience at the school receives a message about the differences in the black community in America and in Africa, the effects of the slave trade, and the British colonisation. On the other hand, the readers receive a poem about the separation of her family. While they are different, they are still one. This poem is also an example of dramatic irony. By the end of the story, the readers understand that the poem applies to the two families and their storylines, but Marjorie does not.