Whitney Brown Brown 1

Black Mirror

The cell shut with intentional and eternal force. I knew my feelings of captivity and loss

were insignificant compared to the feelings of my ancestors who once lay there. The everlasting

darkness and damp heavy ocean air revealed a place that I wish was kept unknown. The

transatlantic slave trade used to just be a thought sculpted into my history, but pushed behind

what the present has brought. The disturbing awe in the pleasing sounds of the ocean. Everything

I usually appreciated about nature changed. The faint voices on the other side of the thick tomb

looking door have seemed to grow unrecognizable. The passionate need for light and fresh air

made evident the internal disappointment I felt for not being built to endure the surrounding my

ancestors were once confined in. Initially, I went to Ghana in hopes to stumble upon a history

that felt more familiar than the one I was exposed to in the US. I thought that in visiting the Cape

Coast Slave Castles there would be turning point in the way I looked at my history. The many

white-washed history lessons my public school education provided me did not reveal all of the

rooted history that came with my ancestry. This rooted history did not consume me in the castle.

I felt unfamiliar in this place.

Walking around in the dungeon like tunnels touched a piece of me that I didn’t know was

there. The captivity, the pain, the blood, the steel, the chains. Was it a cause for gratitude over

the fact that those were no longer the circumstances people had to endure or a cause of mourning

at the hurt? I am a product of this history that I was not even sure how to react to. I went to

Ghana looking for a piece of myself that I knew was present but I wasn’t ready to face,

especially alone. I longed for familiarity in complexion, faith, and ancestry. I soon found that I
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was wrong to correlate the three. My time abroad was a designated learning experience that was

filled with lectures and statistics that I vaguely remember, but my time in the cell will always

hold a place inside of who I am.

As I walked outside the dungeon part of the castle out into the open air. I continued

toward the large balcony and caressed the canons while avoiding the chains on display. I looked

out into the immense ocean. All the water. It was terrifying. I no longer saw the Cape Coast

Castle as beautiful. I could only see death. I could only imagine the life lost. Furthermore, I did

not want to. I did not find as much comfort and awakening as my peers who were of no African

descent. I ached at the history lessons and interactive tour. How could such an abstract history

bring so much pain and familiarity? I found it odd that I was at a place that reflected black

history, but did not know the detailed story of what happened. Unlike when I am at home and the

evolution of technology allows every story my grandmother has told me to be proven with an old

picture or scrap from a local newspaper. This realization caused me to question why is it that in

this Ghanaian history I couldn’t match my last name or distinctions in facial features with

another face from this new found history.

The European culture, ideals, and purpose that influenced that castle was something that

was never made so evident in the history lessons I was taught in America. During the tour, it

became harder and harder to take in the facts and statistics that the tour guide was spouting out.

The difference in social construct and what was accepted in our texts in American made history

books deterred from me knowing the whole truths of my history. Mahiri’s and Sablo’s study on

the African American Youth in an urban community in “Writing for Their Lives”, many

arguments they made reflected my disconnect. Through cross-cultural research, they “argued that
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literacy is ultimately political and that it has different implications within different sociocultural

contexts” (16). This was my first time hearing of the great economic prosperity slavery brought

colonialism all over the world, beyond North America. The extent of the unknown made the tour

even more unpleasant. I felt lied to about something that I knew nothing about. The oral

storytelling within the black community never seemed to reach this far back, though everyone

seemed to know slavery was a part of our collective past.

I was supposed to come to a place that everyone dreamed of because there was a common

notion in the black community that it held more of who I am than the place I was born, but that

doesn’t seem to be true. It was hard finding any part of who I wanted to be in within the walls of

that castle. It was hard to see a culture that treated me better than the one at home. It was difficult

to find the faces that looked like mine that didn’t shed remnants of sadness and despair. A place

where everyone knew everyone and the roots of the people were unbroken. I could not find

comfort. I did not find peace. I had to realize the past lead to the present, but does not define the

future. The black floors and blood stains were the beginning to a story that has ended. I must

now be open to the influenced present. I couldn’t find it in myself to force a smile for the

pictures, though I am now capable of reflecting and taking from the experience all it was willing

to give. History isn’t always as clear and concise as I would like it to be.

Ultimately, I traveled to a different continent with the intention of finding who I thought I

was in efforts of teaching others and attaining the ability to be present an new perspective for

people in my community. The process of “identity construction” that Mahiri and Sablo talks

about is seen through the experiences that I have already acquired that determines how I take in

and reflect upon new information (29). Through my actions during an unfamiliar experience, I
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also portray what I am built from. I learned I was built from a strong people that made it through

unimaginable conditions and lived through a system that was built against them. A people who

never gave up. I am built of resilience and life. Ironic that seeing and learning of the pain has

taught me that. I found determination and grit. In Ghana, I did not find my tribe or the precise

geographical location of my ancestry, but everything inside me has changed. I know there is a

lack of influence from African culture in the way the history is taught in the US. The way I strive

to be a better version of myself can be shown through the hours I spent walking around a place

of where my people were hurt. I became open to the old. I was willing change and replace what I

thought to be true.
 Works Cited

Mahiri, Jabari, and Soraya Sablo. “Writing for Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of

California’s Urban African American Youth.” Visons and Cyphers, edited by David F. Green,

Jr., Inprint Editions, 2016, pp. 15-34