400 Years after the Coming: Daniel Black's The Coming: A Novel as a Guide for "we, a people" to Return to Africa

CLA JOURNAL 223 400 Years after the Coming: Daniel Black’s The Coming: A Novel as a Guide for“we, a people”to Return to Africa Amy Yeboah We call our village Affican Town. We say dat ’cause we want to go back in de Affica soil and we see we cain go. Derefo’ we makee de Affica where dey fetch us. –Kossola Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination. –Toni Morrison In August 1619, the Portuguese kidnapped “20 and odd” enslaved Africans from the colony of Angola and kingdom of Ndongo in west central Africa and brought them to the British colony of Virginia.1 While Africans had been in other parts of the Americas before 1619, this coming marked the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and a multigenerational trend of oppression that has long persisted. While the 115th United States Congress, in House Resolution 1242, focused on institutionally recognizing August 2019 as the 400th anniversary, President Nana Akufo-Addo and the Republic of Ghana continued its traditional approach of welcoming members of the African diaspora home. In declaring and formally launching 2019 as the “Year of Return,” the year-long event continues the conversation of “return” for all Africans raised as soon as they left the shores of Note: The impetus for this essay was sparked by my participation in the 2016 NEH/Howard University project titled “Seshat: A Howard University Digital Humanities Initiative.” Lead by principal investigator Dr. Dana A. Williams, this archival venture works with the College Language Association, a foundation founded by African Americans, to digitize humanities resources focused on African-American literature. 1  For years, the Portuguese had been capturing, marching, and murdering thousands of Africans to be packed in ships by the hundreds, with the mindset of sending them to the mines of Mexico and the fields of Brazil. The “20 and odd” were on their way to Vera Cruz aboard a Portuguese ship Sao Jao Bautista, part of a contingent of about 350 enslaved Africans, when they were apprehended off the coast of Mexico by the “White Lion,” an English warship. 224 CLA JOURNAL Amy Yeboah Africa.2 The Year of Return, Akufo-Addo proclaimed, “symbolize[s] a moment in time where we open our arms even wider to welcome home our brothers and sisters in what will become a birthright journey home for the global African family.”3 Yet, receiving a call to return without a guide can result in uncertainty and reluctance. This essay suggests that Daniel Black’s The Coming: A Novel guides readers through a “return” with a sense of direction and with edifying language, which ultimately inspires readers to “return” with hope for the future. Even with a standing invitation to return to the mother continent, there are many reasons people from the diaspora might be reluctant to go to Africa. Among the many challenges is the undeniable dilemma of the ghost.AmaAtaAidoo claims: “Ghost…Ghost...ah, yes! One early morning, When the moon was up Shining as the sun, I went to Elmina Junction And there and there, I saw a wretched ghost Going up and down Singing to himself ‘Shall I go To Cape Coast, or to Elmina I don’t know, I can’t tell. I don’t know; I can’t tell” (32). Aidoo speaks of the return with fear, a haunting fear of not knowing how, who, or where to return. Such haunting realities of uncertainty are exhibited in comments such as those by Raven Symone, who told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that she was an American, not an African American (Raven-Symone). In some ways, her remarks echoed those of her fellow Cosby Show cast member, Bill Cosby, who declared: “We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a thing about Africa” 2  The call for a “return” to Africa is not new, of course. Perhaps the most well-known story of a “return” is that of Abdul...