Books, Wine & Zentangle - A Day with Gogo & Kinna
BY DJ YAMZ
A breath and a pause, and the biggest love from Tema! 💚🧡
The first month of 2023 is done and dusted and here we are, in a new month and already in high gear!
On January 31, my good friends and fellow creators, Abigail ‘Manager’ Sah, Nana ‘Afroscope’ Opoku and I were privileged to spend an afternoon with legendary Ghanaian writer, poet, playwright and academic, Ama Ata Aidoo and her daughter, Kinna Likimani.
I still don’t have the words to fully capture how awesome that day was but I’m deeply grateful to have had the privilege to spend time with a timeless creative force and wonderful human being in Ama Ata Aidoo (who is affectionately called ‘Gogo’).
From this first visit alone, there’s so much I could write about Gogo and Kinna but I’d probably need terabytes and exabytes of cloud storage to fully get out all my thoughts and feelings. There was open, wholesome and engaging conversation all around as we touched on a range of topics like love and relationships, Kinna’s famous literary uncles and aunts, the ‘Rawlings Revolution,’ as well as current issues in politics and general commentary on life in Ghana.
The whole experience over me as we say in pidgin but I think it overed Abigail even more 😄. So, I think it’s only fitting that my Manager of Managers, Abigail, takes the lead in writing about our magical day with Gogo and Kinna.
Happy reading!!
Abi, over to you!
Love,
Yamz
(PS: For the keen bookworms - After Abigail’s piece, I’ve included a list of book recommendations from Kinna that you can check out!)
The more you want change, the more you work to bring it out.
~ Ama Ata Aidoo
Meeting Our Heroes by Abigail Eyram Sah
They say it’s best not to meet your heroes, and for the most part I agree; we’re all human and flawed and it’s almost unfair to put anyone on a pedestal for a multitude of reasons. Meeting your heroes could leave you disillusioned or at worst frustrated, at least if you’re an idealist like I am. What I’ve barely heard anyone say though is that sometimes meeting your heroes might just be what you need to be reminded that there are still people who walk the talk, who are filled with and emit love and brilliance, who serve as a reminder that there is more to life than the mundane, that we have to keep at the things that bring us life.
Yamz is right, I was completely “overed” by spending close to four hours speaking and communing with Gogo and her daughter Kinna. I’m still not sure I’ve completely recovered from the high I experienced that day. I mean can you blame me? I was eleven when I read my first African book, when we had to perform Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost in sixth grade and after reading that play my reading list has skewed heavily towards authors from the Black diaspora ever since. Now fast forward almost two decades and Yamz sends me a text saying we’ve been invited to spend a day with the woman who had no qualms with saying to a Western journalist “since we met you people 500 years ago look at us, we’ve given everything, you are still taking.” Of course I was gagged lol!
It’s no wonder then that I can’t fully put into words what that day felt and meant to me. I can only describe to you the way that the sheen of dust in the sky filtered out the harshest of the sun’s rays as we waited to be let into Gogo’s home, the way that Kinna abandoned her plan of impending departure upon the mention of Jennifer Makumbi’s name and instead fed our minds with book recommendations and literary tea whilst filling our bellies with muffins and grilled chicken, the moment my eyes zeroed in on the blues and purples of Gogo’s outfit once we were ushered into her room, her warmth, the way she hugged each of us multiple times, asked us our names, who we were, told us to keep at it; the things that we loved to do.
You had to be there to experience the levity that came with Gogo trying to playfully steal back from Yamz an out-of-print copy of her book, The Eagle and the Chickens, that even she didn't have a copy of. Or to share in the way that Nana Opoku quietly soaked in the littlest details, down to the small group of Zentangle patterns stuck on Gogo’s wall. For me, I’ll be the mom/grand-mom who never misses the opportunity to tell her kids and grandkids that there was a day when I quoted from memory this line from Our Sister Killjoy to its author…
“ Your people, they see many small things in people, yes?”
“Yes. Because a long time ago people was all people had.”
…and she said back to me in surprise, “You read that?”
Of course, Gogo, I read that, and it’s been one of the guiding principles of my life ever since; to try and see everyone clearly and with intention, down to the smallest details, because really we’re all we really have.
Kinna’s Book Recommendations
Read more translated works!
~ Kinna
Ama Ata Aidoo (An Angry Letter in January)
Chinua Achebe (Arrow of God)
N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth Trilogy)
Wole Soyinka (Death and the King's Horseman)
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard)
Kwame Nkrumah (The African Genius Speech; Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism)
Naguib Mahfouz (The Cairo Trilogy)
Other Authors to check out!
José Saramago
Italo Calvino
Dionne Brand
Slavoj Žižek
Octavia Butler
Nuruddin Farah1 (Kinna says he writes with female protagonists)
Until Next Time! 👋🏿
That’s it for this issue! Hope you enjoyed it! 😊
Special thanks once again to my hero, Abigail ‘Manager’ Sah, for her help in finalizing this issue.
Until we link again! Breathe easy!! 🐉
Nuruddin’s name came up after I’d asked Kinna for tips on writing a story with a female protagonist.
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