Black Gold of the Sun

Ekow Eshun

You would think "where you from, no, where you really from?" too strange and stupid a question to ask of a black guy with a London accent in this day and age but apparently Ekow Eshun gets asked it all the time. Eshun says he usually replies his parents were from Ghana but he was born in London. Eshun pops up from time to time on BBC2's Newsnight Review on Friday nights. He's also Artistic Director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts.

His book Black Gold of the Sun attempts to unravel the Where You From question and is the story of his trip to Ghana in 2003, his first visit to the country since childhood. His search for identity is a journey into paradox. He discovers African American tourists in Accra dressed in traditional costume but sneering at the lack of facilities. The locals view the Americans with contempt. Eshun himself is hailed as "burenyi" (white man) by the Ghanaians and not because (strangest of all) he discovers that he does, indeed, have one white ancestor. The ancestor turns out to have been an important slave trader.

Questions of heritage, identity, ancestry and belonging are never easy (writes this Englishman born in Scotland with a Jamaican daughter). I heard an interviewer ask Eshun if he felt he'd come "home" when he touched back down at Heathrow. The answer was a kind of yes.