Stones Tell Stories at Osu: Memories of a Host Community of the Danish Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade by H. Nii-Adziri Wellington (review)

To break into such a hallowed topic is like treading on holy grounds, no, more like unholy grounds—where the riot of forgetfulness, the gambles of not guilty, the resounding walls of separation (between kith and kin) all rush with adrenaline from their hiding places only to disappear because a note of truth had eaten them all up. Perhaps it is safe to say that the descendants of slave trading communities on the Slave Coast of West Africa have not belabored the loss of lives and wealth with the acuity and comprehension required of them and thus Wellington’s re-visitation of the subject should be approached as Maya Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” spells out:

History despite its wrenching painCannot be unlived, but if facedWith courage, need not be lived againLift up your eyes uponThe day breaking for youGive birth againTo the dream

Henry Nii-Adziri Wellington’s book, Stones Tell Stories at Osu: Memories of a Host Community of the Danish Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, a multipart biography of the slave trade at the Osu Coast, captures the kaleidoscopic notoriety and footprint on the landscape and culture of Osu. A professor of architecture and heritage studies (University of Ghana), Wellington succeeds in telling the story with “the rounded texture of the architect” (Kaiza). His creative nonfiction narrative is rooted in the perspective of writing for the contemporary average African, who through no fault of his/hers has embraced institutional forgetfulness when it comes to the slave trade. Such a past cannot be folded like yaanobo, mourning cloth, and tucked away at the bottom of a forgotten trunk, hoping the violence will remain hidden, convincing the past that hopes were never obliterated or emotional links carted away and lost to the wide ocean.

Many works have criticized the underrepresentation of the African voice in the studies on literary representations of transatlantic slavery. Georgia Axiotou’s thesis argues that “the answer lies in the ways we define ‘voice’ and ‘memory,’ on how limited or open is our angle of seeing, and on how we expect authors of the black Atlantic to stage a history that exists only as fragments in the official and communal archives” (ix). In spite of this difficulty, Wellington has managed to piece a profound narrative using these fragmented sources as well as oral tradition from the “specificities of West African political and cultural landscapes” (Axiotou 4).

The distinctive history of Osu is meticulously defined by the mystery-infused narrative voice of Ataa Forkoye who, in measured swoops, carries his listening audience and readers over great expanses of time and space, bringing to life “old days of yore”: the founding of the Osu community, a history that precedes the slave trade; varied places including the Christiansborg (Osu) Castle, houses and ruined piles of stones from the slave trade era, structures that held their place and their stories that none has been willing to listen to until now; the local political drivers of the transatlantic trade—its villains and victims, culprits and collaborators. Ataa Forkoye’s listening entourage, intrigued, follow him with rapt wonder and interest to various historic sites in the community as children did in the past with skillful storytellers and town criers. Ataa Forkoye, a third space like the one defined in Brenda Cooper’s Magical Realism in West African Fiction, thrives boundlessly “in the fertile interstices between these extremes of time or space,” however, the flashbacks he excavates to frame the progressing inquiry sometimes fragment the grand narrative and could be daunting for the reader (Cooper 1).

The allure of the trade was its elusive voice or rather many voices backed by regal power both sides of the Atlantic. A trade in love with its voice could not hear any others. With the influx...