Student Writings

As the course progresses, the students' writings will be posted here.

Pre-Ghana Thoughts & Expectations:
Student Writings before the Trip to Ghana 2005

Diana Price

As I intend to pursue a career committed to the upholding and protection of human rights, I am seeking opportunities to see and learn exactly what I am and will be fighting for. I have no doubt that this course and the trip to Ghana it includes would meet these needs while transporting me physically and intellectually to a rare and crucial awareness of self and of the world.

Amber Berry

Engaging in this seminar would aid in my deeper understanding of the importance and significance of this forced migration and captivity by actually allowing me to visualize and sense the pain and suffering of those involved. In addition to studying the literature that resulted from this inhumane trade, the trip itself would grant me the unique opportunity to walk the in footsteps of my ancestors and sense their presence first-hand. The Literature of the Middle Passage would be the ultimate end to my college experience and Barnard education, as well as a great contributor to my continued growth as an African-American woman.

Tanya Everett-Heggie

The teaching of slavery in elementary and high schools is vastly underdeveloped and often leaves one with a set of images, yet without any analysis. I remember the section in US history on slave narratives to have had a profound effect on me, in that I was finally hearing a slave perspective on their experiences in bondage. I also remember feeling like I would never be satisfied by the narrow and remedial study of my own cultural history.... This course would also help me in my career goals, because I hope to start a politically motivated, multicultural theatre company in the future, as well as to write and produce original works of theatre. My experiences with the Black Theatre Ensemble over the last three years have shown me that theatre and the politics of race are often intimately linked.

Ireen Kahn (Veena)

As a first generation Bengali woman, with Muslim parents, born into a colonized country, and raised in America, my personal quest to understand where "home" is has been ongoing...   

Recently I saw the Migration Exhibit at the Schomberg Institute.   As I looked at the maps, shackles, pictures, and signage that represented different migration movements of Africans--forced and voluntary--I was stunned. I experienced a sense of history that no books have been able produce, the kind of almost kinesthetic understanding that stays with one for a lifetime.   I also realized that the Middle Passage, an area that remains unexplored for me in my academic studies, is a crucial link in putting together the history of colonialism and slavery.   The continuous impact of inequality in our world can only be addressed and changed by honestly facing and healing the past, both for ourselves individually and collectively.

Anne Donlon

I think the Literature of the Middle Passage will help me challenge ideas about nationality--my own nationality, as someone who was born, raised and educated in the US--as well as broader questions regarding nationality...    In particular, with regard to the United States of America, the contradiction between the enlightenment ideals promoted in the Bill of Rights and other founding documents, and the brutal imperialism and enslavement that happened simultaneously, seems important to bring to the forefront of thinking about the nation. I think this course will make me take a long, hard look at the United States, the way I have envisioned its past, and how I view contemporary society and social policies.

Nafeesah Allen

As an Africana studies major, I've come to understand various phenomena that have affected the African diaspora throughout its expansive history. The middle passage (always as a bullet point to the larger topic of the entire African slave trade and its many forms, locations, and reasons for being) has been presented to me in the collective form of a barrage of numbers, diagrams of packed ships and vague speculations about the identities of the surviving 'human cargo.' Perhaps, I'm asking too much in wanting specifics, but the added perspective of literature could add some much needed depth...    I'd love to have the opportunity to further explore literature as a means to understanding the historic and collective experience of the Middle Passage.

Jamarah Harris

In both my English and American Studies majors, I have studied throug the lens of the African-American experience to better understand the definition of cultural citizenship in America and how an individual, or more specifically a community of individuals, might be able to achieve it. My theory, not mine alone I'm sure, is that minorities within America (ethnic, religious, and increasingly sexual and gender) are forced to compete rather than unite in their various struggles for   freedom, each constantly hoping to prove that they are more deserving of citizenship than another minority group...    I intend to do my combined senior thesis on this topic and would be incredibly grateful for the opportunity to conduct a more comprehensive study of the global expression of this odd and dangerous social occurrence.

Emily Dobbins

While a trip to Ghana is clearly an attractive feature of Literature of the Middle Passage , I regard it with a cautious enthusiasm.   Going to Ghana will be hard.   I do not think all the reading in the world could ever prepare me for what I will find there.   Literature has helped me to answer and inspire new personal and academic questions, but much of the experiences, feelings, and ideas described are lost in the distance between history and myself.   Thus, a journey to the source of these experiences, feelings, and ideas will help to close that gap.   In Ghana, I expect to be challenged in ways that Barnard or New York City or the United States will never be able to do.   I will not have my cultural capital to rely on for protection, or my white privilege for power.   Although I can hardly predict what those challenges may entail, I do believe that my current understanding of my identity, my place in the current world and the historical world will be changed for the better.   This redefinition of myself will be difficult, it is a journey well worth taking, and I will look to the stories of those who endured much more than I have as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade for inspiration and strength.

Anissa Bazari

As the daughter of a South Indian Muslim immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker, and as someone who is often mistakenly identified with a variety of races, I am always interested in issues of race and multiculturalism in America. I also realize that as an American many aspects of my everyday life--the music I listen to, the books I read, my political ideas, my interpersonal relationships--are all influenced by the slave trade and its impact on America. As one of the defining factors in American history, slavery and the racial issues that came with it are inextricably linked to American life. I believe that literature is one of the best ways of understanding these issues on a personal, individual level, because the reader can relate to these works while still gaining multiple perspectives. Learning more about the literature of the middle passage will not only broaden my academic experience, but will influence the way I act and react in the world every day.

Tina Borysthen-Tkacz

For years, I have learned about American slavery in history and English classes, but always from a white, American perspective.   I want to know how this issue affects Africa and the African people, and how African postcolonial writers are using their literature to express a social history of the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Africa, because in many ways, this relationship has not improved greatly, especially in terms of American AIDS policy in Africa.   This course would allow me to study both American and African perspectives, and learn from the writers firsthand about their documentary literature.  

Erin Fennern

Bethany O'Shea

I firmly believe that African literature remains to this day a largely understudied and marginalized genre.   One would be hard pressed to find an American high school that includes the writings of Ama Ata Aidoo, or Chinua Achebe in its curricula.   Africa has become this abstract notion for many Westerners, including myself.   There is a distancing from and isolation of Africa (both physical and cultural) that allows it to be perceived as the "other."   Literature enables the reader a view into specific aspects of a given culture, but there is still a protective detachment that can be maintained.   I can read about the horrors that Olaudah Equiano experienced, sympathize with him, and laud him for his abolitionist work, but I get to do so from the comfort of my liberal, northeastern college, in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, separated by almost three hundred years and over three thousand miles.   But going to Ghana, seeing a slave fort, exploring a continent that I have only read about, all force me to break down the distance between the words and the reality.  

Student Comments on Ghana, 2004

Maya Wainhaus

How can I sum up the experiences of the past 10 days?   To say it has been emotional, inspiring and confusing all at once seems too vague, and yet those are all the things I feel as we prepare to head home.   Seeing the Cape Coast and Elmina castles took the history of slavery out of the textbook and made it a more tangible horror that I cannot still fully comprehend.   As I sort out my experiences and reactions in the days and weeks to come, the challenge will be to share what I've learned and to integrate the lessons of this trip into my daily life and interactions.

Mary Ellen Brennan

Before coming to Ghana, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I had some predictions about how this trip would enhance my work in the seminar.   The Literature of the Middle Passage has introduced me to texts that I haven't really explored during college and has challenged me to think deeply about slavery, race, and African American identity.   As I anticipated our trip, I assumed that our ten days in Ghana would be an opportunity to further explore and consider what I had read and discussed this semester.   I didn't come close to imagining how profoundly the experience would affect me, both as a student and as a human being.   From the moment I stepped out of the airport at Accra into the crowd of Ghanaians waiting to greet friends and family members, I have been confronted with striking and powerful contrasts. I have seen the extreme poverty of a people who possess such a rich and vibrant culture and the alarming beauty of a place which is connected with such tragedy, pain, and inhumanity.   Rather than simply challenge and flesh out my previous thoughts and work, this trip to Ghana has informed my studies and my life in ways in which no book could come close.   I almost feel embarrassed to admit this, but until coming to Africa, I did not nearly conceive the degree of poverty in a Third World country like Ghana.   I may have known that it existed, but I did not really think about it enough or feel moved by it until I came here.   In addition, when I was still in New York, I did not imagine how much our visits to Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle would touch me.   I have learned about and recognized the horror of slavery since grammar school, but as I stood--hot, tired, and slightly homesick for my friends and family in America-- in the female slave dungeon in Elmina the experience was completely different. As I thought about the feeling of being crammed into the chamber for three months, forever severed from any connections to home, I felt a new sense of shock and numbness.   I am still trying to collect and process my thoughts about our trip.   Right now, it is hard to avoid viewing my time in Ghana simply as a series of thrilling images - a six-year-old girl trying to hoist a water jug onto her head, a group of people dancing on a rundown street, the door of Cape Coast Castle through which countless Africans left the land of their home and family.   I look forward to thinking more about the trip when I return to New York and using this experience to enrich my final endeavors as a college student.

Aderinsola Adesida

It is so crazy that I'm now about to leave Ghana.   I was starting to feel like I was getting the hang of Ghana.   I will definitely come back here one day, just because I really enjoyed the country, the people, and the cultures.   Ghana will always have a place in my heart, as corny as that sounds.   I had the opportunity to reevaluate the way I see myself, as well as my notion of my identity.   I appreciate being able to have been transplanted into a place that allowed me to do this unintentionally.   Though I'm sad to be leaving Ghana, I'm excited to exercise everything I've learned about myself in New York.  

Rebecca MacLean

It will take me the better part of a lifetime to fully understand and appreciate the impact of this experience on my life.

So, as I prepare to go home, the trip seems most clearly distinguished by a persistent and complex feeling of discomfort.   While I had anticipated feeling uncomfortably aware of who I was because of where I was, I did not expect to be in such a state of physical and emotional discomfort; there was the weather, the heat, the travel--all the trivial trials;   and then the poverty and the castles--the most troubling reality.

But I feel that my discomfort is most appropriate considering the nature of our subject of study and the purpose of our trip.

Mamyrah Prosper

Many say that the displaced Africans that walk the Americas are lost and disconnected from their past and heritage.   After having spent these days here in Ghana, I would argue the contrary (or at least as it pertains to my experience as an African diasporan in Haiti).   Being in Ghana provided me (albeit the poverty) a great level of comfort in my time of personal sufferings because it reminded me of home, of Haiti.   It's been said (about Haiti) that it is a little piece of Africa that has floated to the Caribbean Seas.   I finally was able to understand to a much greater extent than before that this is in fact true.   In the Ghanaians, I found familiar faces and sounds.   In me, some Ghanaians saw their black sister, one they welcomed and accommodated.   I hope that I will be able (during retrospective reflections) to reconcile the "identity" that I had wanted to discover here in Africa, in Ghana.  

Elise Giannasi

Where do I even begin? I came to Ghana pressuring and expecting myself to change.   I set out to internalize and process everything I've seen and experienced in just 12 days.   But, I've come to realize that this change will not be immediate, and perhaps it is better to experience a gradual shift in my identity that will be lasting, rather than a short-lived and intense redefinition of self.

I am eager to face the challenge of figuring out how and where to insert Africa into my life in America.   This will be a continuous process that will only serve to expand and enrich this strange and wonderful experience I've had in Ghana.

Bendita Malakia

My devastation in Ghana has been the realization that identity is so unbelievably transient.   The identities that I thought would solidify here have been thrown into question. The result of the interactions I have had with my colleagues, the Ghanaians I have encountered, and a confrontation with self, has made me realize that I have identities at work I have never sought to embrace or define because they never seemed relevant before these 10 days in Ghana.

What has been difficult for me to negotiate has been the fact that identities are never constructed in a vacuum, obviously, nor in the vacuum that is Self.   In Ghana, it has been a compromise of factors that I have not come to fully comprehend or wrap my arms around.

On a less individualistic level, I have come face to face with a poverty that I have just begun to feel and will not be able to intellectualize for days, months, or maybe even years.   The struggles the people here have on a day-to-day basis coupled with the idolization of American dress and music, are at once jarring.    To realize that the majority of the difficulties the people here experience, as well as their outlook, is the direct result of the slave trade and later colonization, gives me a deep sense of discomfort--not merely because it exists but because it was all defined by an 'Other' whose interests were purely exploitative.   Where the people we now call Ghanaians (and who call themselves Ghanaians) would have ended up without the penetration of Europe, we will never know--but I do know that if Ghana ended up in the same place, at least it would have been the result of their own doing.   The crisis lies in that we will just never know.   What I do know is that among certain sectors there is a struggle to emerge with a positive future of self-determination that sometimes directly confounds the remnants of colonialism.   The struggle to forge an identity in spite of the past but using it to build a more positive future (Sankofa!) directly parallels my identity formation resulting from my experiences on this trip.

The question that has resonated with me throughout this course and trip as the one of utmost importance is the troubling question of where home is for a woman like me - Black in America, with an Angolan father and an African-American mother.   I have struggled to define the roots of home by place - Africa cannot be that place as I have no direct roots there, and America cannot be that place, as I reside on the margins.   The answer that brings me comfort for this day and this moment is that home resides within me and I take it where I go.

Aliesha Bryan

I could not have done better on my own.   This is what I have been thinking since our stay in Elmina where we saw Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle.   The beauty of this place and its people frightens me as much as anything that can't be described.   The trip has left me speechless and inarticulate.   We went from reading sobering literature to hearing the words of our fellow classmates and creating a bridge across the Atlantic.   The saddest part is that this bridge only allows us to cross.   Only curiosity to know what profound effects history can produce will lead to the building of communication networks abroad. This class quickly became an exercise in dialogue as we expressed our tensions, anxieties and even our own ignorance and stubbornness.   This trip to Ghana has left all of us exposed--unable to hide behind our intellectual capacities.   But this "stripping" feeling is also a hardening one, like a broken bone that becomes stronger but is still susceptible to those things which broke it.   I liked being "opened up."   This trip gave me reasons to speak.

Katie Maurer

I wasn't sure what to expect before coming here; this whole trip has been a deeply shocking experience.   The living conditions I've witnessed in this country are unlike anything I've ever imagined. The visits to the slave forts were deeply affecting; they actually evoked physical reactions and intensified the subject a hundred-fold - an experience I never could have gotten from reading books.   In my time here I've experienced what it feels like to be a member of the minority for the first time.   It's been a challenge adapting to the foreign-ness of the country and even now I have trouble exactly defining my reactions to it.

I have no doubt that this experience will continue to affect me and influence my decisions in life for many years to come.   Already, it has caused me to re-evaluate my plans for the future and to redefine my life goals.   To be able to witness these conditions up close, to be directly faced with the reality - not just of the horrors of the slave trade and the very real and devastating effects it had on generations of people to come, but also the present living conditions of the people - forced me to reconcile my conceptions of the world as gleaned through books and the media, with the living, everyday reality of it.   This has been an invaluable educational experience, one that I've been, and will continue to be, very grateful for.

Saffiyah Okoye

I have seen, heard and smelled hundreds of human activities that I never experienced before and which were impossible to anticipate.   It is difficult to place myself within the context of what I have witnessed - immense poverty, a nation in the process of defining itself, and monuments to the ways in which humanity has related to one another over the last 600 years.   My immediate reaction is a feeling of being human and an understating that the world today is not without explanation, but rather a result of past actions.

Manmeet Kaur Bindra

I have focused much energy on trying to understand the history of colonialism and contemporary inequality out of a concern for those who suffer.   I have chosen to dedicate my life to working on issues of social justice, and have sought to understand the complex histories, politics, literature, and theories that surround the ideas and issues of interest to me.   I have completed many courses, written numerous papers and have been working for a non-profit within the Poverty program where I conduct research about undocumented labor in New York City and Chicago.   As Ama Ata Aidoo would say, working to achieve any change in society will require a lot of "thinking and doing."   I seized the opportunity to participate in this course to finally have a chance to see another part of the world.   Despite my high level of education, no degree of intellectual pursuit or research would have ever prepared me for the kind of poverty I saw in Ghana. I didn't expect that to be the most powerful part of my trip.   The three times during the past week when I walked through Accra and Elmina were the only moments in which I actually saw, smelt and felt this country.   Walking through Elmina for the first time was particularly moving.   I felt like I was walking into a commercial on television for "Save the Children," or some other charity to help children in the "Third World."   The visible signs of deprivation were haunting enough, but the thought of what lay beneath the visible sight of the town in the form of disease, sickness, and envy of my "white" presence filled me with a sorrow beyond words.

One of the most significant slave castles that was built by Europeans to assist in the transportation of millions of bodies across the Atlantic was built in the small town of Elmina.   The profound symbolism behind the presence of such destitution among the people living in the shadow of that castle embodied the immense sorrow behind the history of this village, and its relation to the construction of a contemporary divide between the "developed" and the "developing" worlds.   For someone who has thought about and worked on human rights for the past four years, I was completely shocked and put at a loss for words in my experience here.   Coming here and walking in a town where everything about me was reduced to a symbol of wealth - to an Abroonie (white person-despite my Indian ethnicity), an American, a Westerner - made me want to crawl out of my skin and escape the situation entirely.   I realized on this trip that a large reason behind my profound feeling of helplessness and guilt about my privilege is due to the way in which we live in divided worlds.   Being able to come and actually see the legacy of colonial history and present day inequality in the city and countryside of Ghana has confirmed my sense of responsibility to take advantage of my position and education in order to help work towards change on a global scale.

Aside from visiting different parts of the country, I found the lectures and conversations with the students and professors at the University of Ghana to be incredibly rewarding.   Discussions with Ghanaian students made me realize how different our perspectives are to the same concerns - particularly the problems of race and national identity.   It was exciting to be able to share thoughts, experiences, and ideas with my peers across the ocean.   But the most inspiring piece of wisdom that has helped sustain me through my moments of desperation and grief on this trip have been the following words stated by Professor Kofi Awoonor: "Those who once took away our voice are surprised they could not take away our song." The spirit of survival has survived and will continue to flourish as long as one can retain their sense of history, identity, and spirit.

Katie Ledwell

In Ghana, a child is often not given a name until it has survived the world for seven days.   Upon my arrival, I felt my own namelessness encroach, as it became clear that I simply did not have the language to describe the sadness or the strength of this country, let alone my role within and without it.

Ghana is poor.   By West African standards it is not, but by the lowest American standards it is unimaginable even as one witnesses it. I felt my identity as a woman evaporate in the faces of sick children I could not help; I felt my identity as an intellectual empty in the presence of dirty water, and raw sewage; and my identity as an American--fragile though it was--become less a source of self-satisfying liberal cynicism and more a source of amazement at my own ancestral luck.

This is not to say I was without ascribed identity.   Many men treated me like a lottery ticket to the States, just as unlikely, just as compelling.   To women in the busy, dirty, Accra market, I was an image, an effigy.   To both, I was unfathomably rich, and I realized for the first time that I was, for I had had water, and college, and penicillin.

Through our class activities, these understandings have been paired, sometimes tragically, sometimes beautifully, with the poetry of Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho, the slave castles of Elmina and Cape Coast, the life history of DuBois.   As a result, my mind now catches on the phrase "African American" in a way that it never did before.   The historical gravity of the slave trade becomes clearer.   The problems in Africa today, and the varied attempts to solve them, leave me feeling impotent and sad, but full of admiration for Ghana and eager to continue to be a part of the conversations we joined here.

I am in no hurry to reclaim that identity which has proven so flimsy out of context (I suspect that I still haven't survived enough to be counted among the conscious members of this world).   My hope that this journey would lead me to future visits has become more of a plan.   I would like to better understand countries like Ghana, and if possible, be among the critical group of value-adders in a developing nation.

Lauren Howe

It's really hard to write a paragraph or a page on my experience to Ghana because at this moment I feel like I could write a book.   I'm really sad to be leaving Ghana, especially since I am finally starting to feel more comfortable, and am beginning to understand the culture much better.   But the past 10 days have been filled with extreme discomfort - one that makes me want to jump out of my skin, to run away, to scream at the top of my lungs.   Discomfort in the fact that I felt so confused and most of all inarticulate.   I even felt voiceless at times because of my extreme confusion and because of the difficulty I had speaking to Ghanaians and even my fellow classmates.   I wasn't sure if I deserved to be one of the students walking through the slave castles or even on the trip.   Going to Africa wasn't going home.   Home for me is America, but being in Ghana really made me think about and question my American identity.   What does it mean to be an American?   What does it mean to not take advantage of all the privileges that others do not have access to?   What does it mean that some of my fellow classmates feel displaced because they do not fit into either American or African society?   These were just some of the questions going through my head at almost every moment of the trip.   I know I could never have gained the type of experience I had from staying in the classroom in NYC. The confusion and discomfort were an integral part of my learning experience in Ghana and at this moment I'm still not even clear or sure of what to make of everything I learned and felt.   Another thing that coincided with the confusion and discomfort was the emotional impact.   I was not expecting myself to be so emotional from seeing Ghanaians living in Accra from a fancy tour bus, from a discussion with Ghanaian students at the University about marriage and women's roles, from walking through the slave castles and most of all from discussions with my fellow classmates on all of these things.   Even though at this moment I as still confused and cannot even comprehend most of what the experience has meant, I leave Ghana knowing that my life and especially the way I think and see things is forever changed.   I know that this process is going to continue for a long time into my future and will have an enormous impact on the decisions I will make and actions I decide to take. Most importantly, I leave with a better sense of who I am and what I may want to do with the rest of my life.

Diana Finkel

As Professor Walvin rightly points out, it's difficult, at times, to find the right verb for what one experiences in Africa.   You cannot say that you "enjoyed" Elmina Castle, or that you "had fun" haggling over a dollar or two at the market - because although the beaches are lovely and the tours are interesting, the trip has not been easy, it is difficult to process at almost every moment.

Looking over the itinerary prior to our departure, I thought our journey has to be sufficient, but basic - some tourist spots, academic activities, plenty of group meals and free time.   However, despite the huge air-conditioned bus and the limitless supply of food and good company, not to mention a meticulously well-planned, foolproof schedule, I have had a bit of trouble dealing with the emotional density of everything I've witnessed.   I guess I expected and was properly forewarned, through a semester-long study of the literature of the Middle Passage, for the residual tragedy, poverty, underdevelopment, turmoil, and sorrow, but nothing could really have prepared me for the intensity and reality of this trip.

Of course, I am still processing, and will continue to process, probably over the course of my lifetime, the impact of making this particular journey across the Atlantic.

Lindsay Glabman

Visiting Ghana was a wonderful experience! I especially enjoyed meeting
students from the University of Ghana and discussing the issues that were
important to them. This trip was a great opportunity to interact with a
different culture and learn about African history while visiting Elmina's
slave castles. I'm still digesting the experience, but it has definitely
expanded my awareness regarding race, poverty, and international travel. A
word of advice to future student travelers: journal journal journal every
moment of your experience, and dont forget the immodium!

Pre-Ghana Thoughts & Expectations:
Student Writings before the Trip to Ghana 2004

"I do not know what to expect! I haven't tried to anticipate anything about the trip because I want to arrive in Africa and be completely taken by surprise. I am against forming any pre-conceived notions that will most likely be wrong because then everything I experience in Ghana will be fresh and objective and exciting. I have talked briefly to a student that studied abroad in Ghana and it sounded like she had a fabulous time. She said everyone was very friendly and outgoing, and though I can't imagine that everyone in the city is friendly, I do believe that it might be a warmer, more trusting culture than New York."
—Lindsay Glabman

"So, it still seems quite unreal to me that we are going to Ghana. Although I am extremely excited, I expect to feel a slight, yet sudden, sense of insecurity upon arriving in Africa. But I expect that this will give a heightened and unforgettable awareness of my identity. I am sure that while my expectations are vague, my experience will be full of vivid perceptions and incredible insight."
— Rebecca MacLean

"I must admit that I am left feeling quite ambivalent about the trip to Ghana. On the one hand, I am excited at the thought of being in West Africa because of my idealization of the "Motherland" and because I believe that my identity, product of the middle passage, will be completed after the trip. On the other hand, and this is largely due to the fact that I have been somewhat disappointed by the students in the class, I fear that what I am expecting to attain from this trip and this group of people will never be materialized.

"I fear that I will not break down some mental walls without the participation of my classmates who are reticent to render themselves vulnerable to conversation. It is ironic and even sad that in a class designed to discuss issues of race and racism the students have managed to avoid the topic altogether.

"However, and on a more hopeful note, I do believe that my personal experience in Ghana will still be fulfilling. I am prepared for an awakening; I am prepared to have Ghana shape a new and revived me even without the support of my peers."
— Mamyrah Prosper

"In the course, Literature of the Middle Passage , we have begun to explore the history, literature, and music surrounding the Atlantic slave trade and its legacy.  The trajectory of the course has moved from a study of early writings by figures such as Equiano and Conrad, to recent figures such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Caryl Phillips, and Baldwin.  The syllabus travels from the past to the present in order to grapple with the deep-rooted and complex repercussions of the greatest forced migration in history.  I feel that a visit to the slave forts in Elmina and Cape Coast is incredibly important in reaching an understanding of the profound impact of the slave trade.  The forts are one of the only existing material monuments to the middle passage.  I believe that the trip will enrich my reading of the literature, and challenge my thoughts and emotions on the effect of this trauma throughout history."
— Manmeet Bindra

"I expect to be deeply affected by this trip, and I welcome the change and heightened awareness it will bring. The legacy and effects of the African slave trade have played a major part in my life, a part I've become much more conscious of through the work of this class. I'll have the opportunity to examine many areas of my identity that I take for granted, and I look forward to this increased self-consciousness. I feel that by the end of the trip I'll have a more jumbled, and yet more clear idea of who I am, my place in the world and my role as a global citizen.

"I look forward to being able to meet and interact with African writers and students--especially the celebrated Ghanaian poets Kofi Anyidoho and Kofi Awoonor, both of whom we studied in class. I used to view African culture as radically different from the one I live in here in the U.S. Since embarking on this course, I've had the opportunity to learn of and create many cultural "bridges"--to discover valuable similarities and kinship between what I once thought of as two distinct "worlds"--and to attempt to accept and reconcile these differences and connections. I look forward to the opportunity of cultural exchange and learning."
— Kathleen Maurer

"I am thrilled to travel to Ghana, but I still don't know quite what to expect.  Across disciplines, Africa has so long been imagined as a symbol of something lost that it will no doubt be jarring to find that it is a real place in no need of retrieval.  In particular, I wonder if I will be able to reconcile the spectral Africa of Conrad and diasporan authors with the concrete place that Chinua Achebe and Ama Ata Aidoo describe in their works.  I admit that the latter, the Africa of metropolises, academia, feminism, is quite new to me.

"Our twelve days will no doubt be a meditation on modernity and memory, as we travel from the University of Accra to the Elmina slave forts on the coast.  I can not imagine how I will feel at the site of such a human tragedy; monuments can seem cold as facts to me, but these facts, and this monument, are too upsetting to leave a person unchanged.  Perhaps because I anticipate such change, my most overwhelming expectation is that I will not go to Africa just once.  This trip is an academic and cultural endeavor, but for me it is also preparation for future, longer trips, during which I may be able to learn more and to make my own small mark in a foreign place."
— Katie Ledwell

"At this point in the semester, the class as a whole seems to not have absorbed the reality that we will in fact be in Ghana in a month.   Our weekly class discussions have filled in many of the gaps, namely facts of where, what, when, and how, but it is an enthralling and slightly exasperating feeling nonetheless not knowing what to expect, or rather what my reaction might be.   It is a relief at least to hear some of the same uncertainty in the voices and words of my classmates.  

"Fortunately, unlike those trips of my childhood in which I somewhat haphazardly stood before historical artifacts and places whose existence I was scarcely aware of at the time, I feel equipped with a much more extensive knowledge of the historical and political sentiments of African-Americans, if not the history of Ghanaians themselves, than I was when I first stepped into the classroom in September.   I have been told many times now that we live in a bubble in America, and perhaps it is naïve of me to think I am even capable of stepping outside of myself or this bubble, but as Caz has said, our identities will change once we step foot in Africa, and I cautiously welcome that change."
— Diana Finkel

"Until recently it has been difficult for me to think about the trip to Ghana for any significant amount of time because it seemed like some far-off dream. I am excited to go to a new country and a new continent and to see the similarities and differences between my life and those of Ghanaians, as well as the many complexities and distinctions that exist within Ghana and the people who live there.   I expect to feel the effects of the history that exists between my country, the United States of America, and Ghana.   Within this history lies many connections, both positive and negative, as well as a vast separation which I expect to dominate.   I am curious as to the sentiment of Ghanaians towards Americans, What do they consider our shared history to be?   How do I fit into their preconceptions?  

"Above all I expect to learn a great deal about another geographical location, different groups of people, relationships between locations and peoples, and hopefully, myself.   I hope that the trip inspires me to reflect and synthesize my new experiences with my life in order to benefit from the incredible opportunity."
— Safiyyah Okoye

"With the trip to Ghana just two weeks away, it no longer feels like an event in the blurry distant future, but something that is actually materializing. My anticipation for the trip is, on the most basic level, sparked by the excitement inherent in visiting any new place, especially a foreign country, and the thrill that comes with traveling. More specifically, I'm looking forward to the rare opportunity to visit the places we have been studying in class, and to meet the writers and poets whose works we have been reading. Though Ghana is physically far away from the Barnard classroom, I hope that the trip will be an extension and amplification of the texts, themes, and discussions that have been a part of the class all semester."
— Maya Wainhaus

"I must admit I'm quite nervous, actually, about our trip to Ghana. Until now, 15 days from our departure, this adventure had not yet become a reality for me. It was something different and exciting to tell my friends, my family, and new people that I met. But the more people I tell, the more I get this response: "Wow, that's really going to change you." Change? Am I ready for such a monumental change? I have become so comfortable in my cosmopolitan, metropolitan, and corporate and future-oriented life that concentrating on the present is quite a challenge. And that is where the first change occurs - before I have even left the country, my "self-shifting," as Caz calls it, has begun.

"My reality is that I am going to Ghana in two weeks. Since I have never left the country before, the only thing I can expect in uncertainty. But uncertainty is like change - I cannot prevent it, so instead I am going to welcome it. Self-shifting does not mean the replacement of my previous self with a new self. Instead, I believe this change will open the door to the expansion of what I already claim as my identity. I am simply carving a new facet of my life. At a mere twenty-two years of age, I should hope that I have plenty of room for growth. And so, I believe this exercise in writing my thoughts and expectations has brought me into the present, ready to face Ghana and all that awaits me there. How exciting to think that the first stamp ever in my passport will be from Africa!!"
— Elise Giannasi

"The readings from The Literature of the Middle Passage have allowed me to confront and consider the complexities of a part of history which is often unexplored or glossed over, as Opoku-Agyeman notes. Granted, I had learned about the slave trade in school since I was young. While I always recognized the inhumanity and injustice of slavery, works like The Interesting Narrative and Crossing the River have urged me to face and ponder more deeply the very tragic and graphic realities of the Atlantic slave trade. For instance, the loss of identity through separation from one's family, name, or religion now resounds as a particularly sad aspect of slavery; I had never thought about it enough until I encountered the experiences of characters like Olaudah Equiano, Nash, and Martha. In the same sense, texts such as The Souls of Black Folk , Changes , and The Fire Next Time , have caused me to acknowledge that and appreciate how the African Diaspora has continued to inflict pain on black people both in this country and in Africa long after slavery has been abolished.

"I believe that the trip to Ghana will continue to challenge me to confront an aspect of the past - a history of exploitive, brutal "conquest" and a legacy of fragmentation and oppression - that might be unsettling and unpleasant to imagine, but is necessary and enriching to investigate. Just as Olaudah Equiano's vivid depiction of his time on a slave ship encouraged me to think about the cruelty existent in every detail of the slave trade, I anticipate that our visits to relevant historical sites in Ghana will emphasize the reality and the tragic circumstances of the events of the African Diaspora. The writings of the authors we have studied in The Literature of the Middle Passage have fostered intellectual examination and exchange as well as ignited feelings of empathy and sorrow. I hope that the experiences that we have in Africa will urge and allow us to question, study, and discuss the Diaspora and its aftermath in new and meaningful ways."
— Mary Ellen Brennan

"I am excited about the impending trip and amazed at how quickly the time has passed since I first discovered that I would be going. This trip holds a lot of meaning for me. On the most basic level it will be the first time I have not spent Thanksgiving with my parents, but on a more profound level, I know that once I get off the plane in Ghana I will be changed. I may not understand that something about the trip will transform my life, my outlook, forever. The difficulty will come when I return and have to process and rework the layers of my life that have been disordered as a result of this mental journey."
— Bendita C. Malakia

"My greatest expectation will be the fulfillment of a dream to see a piece of that Africa that the writers of Négritude, Noirisme, Antillanité, Créolité, and African Diasporan writers in general, holders of the legacy of the middle passage wrote about and still do. This question of what it could mean to be a child of Africa, and a piece of "the Black Atlantic." Will I find there on that soil the grain of inspiration that sprouted in the hearts of those writers? In hearing, meeting, and speaking with some of Africa's contemporary writers, visiting her schools and terrifying vestiges of humanity's own brutality, I think one can do little else but feel what events poured into the trauma that poured into the souls and then poured out of the pens of Black Diasporan men and women. This trip will be something of an exercise in placing text into context, but it will also be a discovery that will leave our hearts open and our own pens poised to perhaps add a piece to the legacy of the middle passage."
— Aliesha Bryan

"I anticipate my travel to Ghana will be a life-altering experience, for I have never been to Africa and I have only been outside of the USA once before. Life altering in the sense that I think going to Ghana will change how I see myself and how I see others. Life altering in that I will look at the country in which I was born in a whole new light. I will challenge the institutions and things I see as problematic even more than I do now. I think the experience of traveling to Ghana will also make me question my major in Art History, my plans to go to law school, things that I and other Americans value as important that are but maybe are not so. I am not trying to say that there are not artists or lawyers in Ghana, but that my experience in traveling to a place that is extremely different than what I have known for twenty one years, will without a doubt bring new light to shaping who I will become in the future."
— Lauren Howe

"The class has forced me to look at how I see the world and to critique in ways that I never thought to. I enjoy the literature and really wish that we were all comfortable enough to dig into the material in ways that would give us a better understanding of ourselves. The discourse is happening but only along the perimeters. My only guess is that it is uncomfortable for all of us to reflect on what might question every single notion we may have had about race prior to the class. Since I have spent a good deal of my life in a country that is so race conscious that it pretends not to be, I constantly have to think about race and its effect on my world and how others respond to me. Fortunately, I have stopped believing that I am supposed to enlighten all others about the centuries-old effects of slavery. I understand the current reality now. It is something that many, including myself, are not allowed to ignore, while for others it is something that conveniently does not exist. I can only worry about how I can continue to enlighten myself. One day, hopefully, most people will have this same goal and maybe the discomfort of knowing and talking about what has come about as a result of slavery will disappear. Sadly, I don't see it happening in my lifetime. Right now, I am hoping that my trip to Ghana will affect me in the most positive of ways - maybe with a dose of optimism."  
—Derin Adesida

Below are excerpts from the essays the students wrote to gain admittance to the course:

"Considering the influence that the transatlantic slave trade had on the entire Western world, if not the entire world, it is amazing that it is not given its due in the English canon."
—Aderinsola Adesida

"I have not read and felt the draw of this literature until late in my college career, and I would embrace the chance to explore, learn about, and write about poems and prose relating to the African Diaspora. In addition, I think that attending readings by some of the African writers we will study and visiting actual slave forts on the trip to Ghana would be a wonderful way to enhance my work in the seminar."
—Mary Ellen Brennan

"My interest in such a course is not only academic; it is very personal. Knowing that my mother's side of the family was brought to the United States by means of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, coupled with my personal experiences as a Black woman in America, have led me to make sure that every course I take is relevant, or made relevant, to my experience and cultural history."
—Bendita C. Malakia

"Visiting Ghana would be an ideal opportunity to meet with and communicate with people of what I perceive to be a radically different culture, and will allow me to experience a completely different point of view of the world. Not only will traveling to Ghana provide me with further insight into the culture of many of those represented by the literature we'll be studying in class, it will also broaden my awareness of the diversity of the world and the varying possibilities of life, along with the different modes of expression that may accompany them."
—Kathleen Maurer

"I have never been to Africa, and if I should get accepted into this program, I am certain that the visit to Ghana will open my eyes in a way that few experiences can. There are limits to the amount that can be learned within the confines of a university. Going to Africa for myself would be one of the highlights of my academic career."
— Elizabeth Segran

"As an American Studies major with a concentration in African-American Culture, I seek a solution to a problem that I continue to encounter in my classes at Barnard - How does one reconcile African heritage with American citizenship? Or rather, what is it that links the African with the American to create an identity that is distinctly African-American ?"
—Elise Giannasi

"Especially because I am a creative writer and am interested in intercultural communication, I would like to read and study the African American voice, and the voice of a minority people writing in times of persecution."
—Lindsay Glabman

"The Literature of the Middle Passage seminar offers an opportunity for me to contribute what I have learned this semester in England to a broader discussion of the literature that came out of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The trip to Ghana would be a wonderful way to further expand, and question, my current understandings of literature and history, by viewing them not as specific to one region or culture, but as a complex and intertwined whole."
—Maya Wainhaus

"With the exception of an exchange program in France that my high school paid for, I have never had the financial means to travel anywhere outside of the US. Six years later, I still have a great desire to travel and I think Africa would be a great place to start considering my interests and the extensive studying I have done regarding the music, art, culture, politics and history of Africa."
—Lauren Howe

"Memory becomes the site of identity. Thus, by writing personal histories, memoirs, and biographies, postcolonial novelists possess the ability to create a more authentic history. I am interested in exploring the "authenticity" of such histories through the study of literature, history and culture."
—Manmeet Kaur Bindra

"As uncertain as I am right now about life, I am certain about my identity. I am from a country that takes pride in its past, claiming to be a neo-African state. I am from a country that claims superficially an attachment to the "motherland" all the while devoting time to crushing any real efforts of the perpetuation of the traditional remnants of West African culture. I am not going to claim that once I set foot in Ghana or any other country within the African continent that I will immediately discover my true self. I personally do not believe in this adolescent myth of finding oneself. I believe in the creation of self. I look at the "return to the motherland" as a possibility to recreate or continue the creation of my self through the epiphany that I hope to undergo."
—Mamyrah Prosper

"When I became an anthropology major at Barnard, I originally intended to study cultural resonances of the slave trade in either West Africa or the West Indies, and in my course of studies I happened upon literature as perhaps the best litmus test of those resonances. I have since changed directions, choosing to focus on inequalities here in the United States, particularly as they relate to education, but the content of "The Literature of the Middle Passage" remains relevant; in fact, I consider it most important to my own plans to go into education after I graduate."
—Katie Ledwell

"I believe that the study of literature - as an academic discipline - and the literary scholar - as an intellectual individual - should come into a more active, participatory role. Rather than promote a separation between the historic past and the modern world, between theory and practice as occurs at times in typical course offerings, this innovative seminar of the Middle Passage and the trip to Ghana would be a voyage from text to context."
—Rebecca MacLean

"The seminar on literature of the Atlantic Slave Trade would certainly allow me to expand my thought and experience with a different culture as other classes at Barnard have allowed me to do, but in an even more interactive capacity. I have yet to make my first trip abroad, and I think to study a different country with my fellow students and then travel with them to a place I had studied would be a completely amazing and broadening experience."
—Diana Finkel

"In short, my interest in this course is extremely personal, but my motivation will turn the experience into a new beginning, as well as the culmination of my time at Barnard."
—Aliesha Bryan