Prompt: The essays by Royster (“When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own”) and Mahiri

and Sablo (“Writing for Their Lives…”) are largely about the difficulties—but also the

possibilities—of negotiating a world that extends beyond the communities in which one was

raised. For this assignment, you will write a narrative essay about an instance when you found

yourself in an unfamiliar social situation. Your essay should identify the source of your

unfamiliarity (language, geographical location, community or culture, race or ethnicity, age,

gender, etc.). You should also discuss whether your experience was positive or negative and

what strategies for negotiating the situation, if any, you found beneficial. What did you learn

about yourself from this experience?

Whitney Brown Brown 1

Professor Releford

Writing, Literacy, and Discourse

8 October 2017

Black Mirror

The cell shut with intentional and eternal force. I knew my feelings of captivity and loss

were insignificant compared to the feelings of my ancestors that once lay there. The everlasting

darkness and damp heavy ocean air revealed a place that I wish was kept unknown. The

transatlantic slave trade used to just be a thought sculpted into my history, but pushed behind

what the present has brought. The disturbing awe in the pleasing sounds of the ocean. Everything

I usually appreciated about nature changed. The faint voices on the other side of the thick tomb

looking door have seemed to grow unrecognizable. The passionate need for light and fresh air

made evident the internal disappointment I felt for not being built to endure the surrounding my
ancestors were once confined in. I went to Ghana in hopes to stumble upon a history that felt

more familiar than the one I was exposed to in the US. In Ghana, visiting the Cape Coast Slave

Castles was a turning point in the way I looked at my history because human suffering was being

branded for the entertainment for tourists. The many white-washed history lessons public school

education has provided me did not reveal all of the rooted history that came with my ancestry.

Walking around in the dungeon like tunnels touched a piece of me that I didn’t know was

there. The captivity, the pain, the blood, the steel, the chains. Was it a cause for gratitude over

the fact that those were no longer the circumstances people had to endure or a cause of mourning

at the hurt? I am a product of this history that I was not even sure how to react to. I went to

Ghana looking for a piece of myself that I knew was present but I wasn’t ready to face,

especially alone. I longed for familiarity in complexion, faith, and ancestry. I soon found that I

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was wrong to correlate the three. My time abroad was a designated learning experience that was

filled with lectures and statistics that I vaguely remember, but my time in the cell will always

hold a place inside of who I am.

As I walked outside caressing the canons and avoiding the chains on display as the slave

castle was turned into a tourist museum. I looked out into the immense ocean. All the water. It

was terrifying. I no longer saw the Cape Coast Castle as beautiful. I could only see death. I could

not imagine the life loss. Furthermore, I did not want to. I did not find as much comfort and

awakening as my peers who were of no African descent. I ached at the history lessons and

interactive tour. How could such an abstract history bring so much pain and familiarity? I was

unfamiliar with the lack of detail I am used to. Within the evolution of technology, I doubt there
is a story my grandmother has told me that cannot be proven with a picture or scrap from a local

newspaper. Why is it that in this history I couldn’t match my last name or distinctions in face

with another face from this time? The European culture, ideal, and purpose that influenced that

castle was something that was never made so evident in the history lessons I was taught in

America. During the tour, it became harder and harder to take in the facts and statistics that the

tour guide was spouting out. In Mahiri’s and Sablo’s study on the African American Youth in an

urban community in “Writing for Their Lives”, many arguments they made reflected my

disconnect. Through cross-cultural research, they “argued that literacy is ultimately political and

that it has different implications within different sociocultural contexts” (16). This was my first

time hearing of great economic prosperity slavery brought colonialism all over the world,

including North America and more. The extent of unknown made the tour even more

unpleasable. I felt lied to about something that I knew nothing about. The oral storytelling within

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the black community never seemed to reach this far back, though everyone seemed to know

slavery was a part of our collective past.

I was supposed to come to a place that everyone dreamed of because it held more of who

we are than the places where we were born, but that doesn’t seem to be true. It was hard finding

any part of who I wanted to be in within the walls of that castle. It was hard to see a culture that

treated me better than the one at home. It was difficult to find the faces that looked like mine that

didn’t shed remnants of sadness and despair. A place where everyone knew everyone and the

roots of the people were unbroken. I could not find comfort. I did not find peace. I had to realize

the past lead to the present, but does not define the future. The black floors and blood stains were

the beginning to a story that has ended. I must now be open to the influenced present. I couldn’t
find it in myself to force a smile for the pictures, though I am now capable of reflecting and

taking from the experience all it was willing to give. History isn’t always as clear and concise as

I would like it to be.

Ultimately, I traveled to a different continent with the intention of revealing who I

thought I was to teach others and present an outside perspective and ended up gaining much

more of who I have become. The process of “identity construction” that Mahiri and Sablo that

about (29). It is through the experiences that I have already acquired that determines how I take

in and reflect upon new information. Through our actions we portray what we are built from. I

learned I was built from a strong people that made it through unimaginable conditions and lived

through a system that was built against them. A people who never gave up. I am built of

resilience and life. Ironic that seeing and learning of the pain has taught me that. I find

determination and grit. In Ghana, I did not find my tribe or the official geographical location my

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ancestry, but everything inside me has changed. I know there is influence in African culture and

the way history is taught. The way I strive to be a better version of myself can be shown through

the hours I spent walking around a place of where my people were hurt. I became open to the

old. I was willing change and replace what I thought to be true.

 Works Cited

Mahiri, Jabari, and Soraya Sablo. “Writing for Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of

California’s Urban African American Youth.” Visons and Cyphers, edited by David F. Green,

Jr., Inprint Editions, 2016, pp. 15-34