Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along The Atlantic Slave Route

This chapter makes a complex comparison between the spiritual experience of slavery and Hartman’s position as a returned descendant of enslaved Ghanaians.

She goes to the castle, where several boys approach and hand her letters so well-worn they have clearly been read many times. Intended for returned descendants of enslaved people, the letters request help with various things, such as buying pencils for school. Hartman takes the letters seriously and begins to meditate on their meaning. She recalls the kosanba, a spirit child “who dies only to return again and again in a succession of rebirths” (86). In her view, the boys have mistaken her for a kosanba. They think she is an enslaved person who experienced death and has returned.

At one time, Ghanaian mothers feared their newborns might be the kosanba and be taken back to the land of the dead, so they called their babies bad names, including “slave,” to make them appear worthless. Hartman compares this practice to the behavior of traders who called their slaves “beloved child” (86) to mark their commodities as valuable.

Hartman notes, “‘Don’t go.’ ‘Stay put.’ These are the words of the master” (87). The enslaver wants to keep the enslaved in this foreign, painful condition.