(Re)Claiming the Academic Self in Ghana, West Africa

• In Event: Before We Were Whole: (Re)Membering Our Lives in Ghana, West Africa

Abstract

Building on Alice Walker (1983) and Katie Canon’s (1995) work, this research is an autoethnographic account of my pilgrimage (Dillard, 2014) to the land of my ancestors in Ghana, West Africa. I am inspired by Cannon (1995) who wrote,

when we...go in search of our mother’s gardens, it’s not really to learn who trampled on them or even why - we usually know that already. Rather, it is to learn what our mothers planted there, what they thought as they sowed, and how they survived the blighting of so many fruits. (Sherely Anne Williams cited in Cannon, 1995 p.27)

In this paper, I explore how one heals from the “blighting” of academia. Through personal narratives, I examine my journey to Ghana, and the lessons learned while uncovering the seeds of wisdom, survival, hope, and healing that were planted by the ancestors. Guiding questions for this research were, What does it mean to heal the academic self, and how does spiritual healing occur in the land of our ancestors?

Author

• Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology