Ghana Must Go

British-American author Taiye Selasi’s debut novel, Ghana Must Go (2013), touches on themes of parental inadequacy and the kind of shame that would drive a man to abandon his family for fear of appearing inadequate in their eyes. The narrative continues in this vein to examine what happens to children after they are abandoned and how they each come to terms with the events in their own ways.

Although some of his children barely remember their father’s presence, nevertheless, it rattled them to grow up without him. The Sai family mourns their father Kweku Sai, struggling to come to terms with his death while working their way through various family issues. The novel is told through multiple points of view in order to give insight into the perspectives of the various family members. Although he has left them behind, Kweku’s wife and his four children are left to deal with the fallout of his passing and his unfinished business in the mortal world.

The novel opens as Ghanaian surgeon Kweku Sai is dying in the garden of a house that he designed by sketching it out on a napkin. An old yogi he met living in a perfectly constructed beach house brought Kweku’s design to life. As Kweku meets his end by way of a heart attack, he reflects on old memories, including the births of each of his children, the injustice of the unraveling of his professional life, and his first wife, Folasadé. Kweku’s current wife, Anna, is sleeping, unaware of her husband’s condition. Folasadé is in a house on another beach, smoking cigarettes and nursing the broken heart she was left with many years ago at the end of her relationship with Kweku.



From there, the novel revolves mainly around the preparations for Kweku’s funeral. Kweku, who was born into poverty and managed to claw his way out of it, is a respected surgeon who has successfully married and had four children, all of whom are successes in their own right. Everything seems to be going right for the family, most of whom are now living in Massachusetts and it is clear that they have built a wonderful life for themselves. However, things take a turn when Kweku is wrongfully dismissed from his position and attempts to hide it. He cannot face the shame of his dismissal, and so he abandons his wife Folasadé; leaving her to raise their children on her own, he returns to his native Ghana.

Kweku’s children live overseas in America, where Kweku emigrated before returning to his native Ghana and remarrying. The narrative observes each of the children as they learn the news of their father’s passing, and how it affects them as they struggle with their own challenges in life. Olu, the oldest of the children, has followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a surgeon. He is married to Ling, a Chinese woman with whom he is madly in love, and living in Las Vegas. Still, Olu is adjusting to married life and finding it difficult to accept Ling as his family.

Taiwo and Kehinde are twins, described as very beautiful, though scarred from a traumatic episode in Lagos when they were young. Taiwo, a talented writer, is studying to be a lawyer but is slightly derailed by her involvement in a scandalous affair with the dean of her college. Kehinde is a renowned painter who spends most of his time hidden away in his studio in Brooklyn, still bearing the scars of his past trauma.



Although the children are resentful of their father, the twins were particularly scarred by their mother’s betrayal as she sent them to stay with an uncle in Nigeria when she couldn’t afford their private school fees any longer. Uncle Femi turned out to be a cocaine addict and a pedophile; the time that Tawio and Kehinde spent living with him remains with them for the rest of their lives.

The youngest, Sadie, is considered her mother’s favorite child. She struggles with a wealth of insecurity and suffers from bulimia. Feeling pressure from her overachieving siblings, she is diligently studying at university to measure up to them and the expectations of her parents. She desperately strives to fit into the family of her white, privileged college roommate.

The novel works its way toward a reunion of all of the children on a beach in Ghana as they grapple with the death of a father they barely knew.



Ghana Must Go received a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. Heralded as a prolific writer, Selasi was previously recognized for her brilliant short story “The Sex Lives of African Girls.