Homecoming: Questions of Identity and Race

All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoesis the fifth installment of Maya Angelou’s intensely personal autobiographical narratives. It details her return to her African roots. Similar in theme to her other writings, most specifically I Know Where the Caged Bird Sings, the book depicts themes of displacement, home and identity. What distinguishes it from this and other books, however, is the complexity of the presentation of these themes.

The book details Angelou’s return to Ghana, the home of her ancestors. In the 1960s, following the independence of Ghana from British rule, the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah promises a new dream for the once colonized nation. Angelou joins other African Americans returning to the country in order to join this great experiment. In doing so, she expects to find herself among those who share both racial characteristics and a geo-political history. Her identity, so far fluid and unstable, will through this journeybe crystallised and rooted. As she states in her book “We were Black Americans in West Africa, where for the first time in our lives the color of our skin was accepted as correct and normal”. What she encounters, however, is not open arms and warm welcomes. Instead, she is met with a coldness and indifference that she was not prepared to encounter.

Through her encounters with various Ghanaians, Angelou discerned that common racial features were not corollary to common racial history. Angelou faces constant discrimination as an African-American: a hybrid identity. She is denied work except at the minimum wage. A more specific example would be the rude manner in which she is turned away from a radio station by the receptionist when she goes to enquire about a job.

 Race, then is not a simple binary construction of White/ Black, West/East and Occident/Orient. The mechanisms that construct these binaries are of equal importance. The experience of African slaves and of colonized Africans, though they may have inhabited the same geographical area are not the same. Further, the process of emancipation and attainment of civil rights of the two groups is vastly different. Race and racial history were thus not correlated in any way. The Ghanaians that Angelou encounters appear to be aware of that. This could be a possible reason for their rejection of her as a member of their community.

The realization of this fact does, of course, cause the writer unhappiness. On the other hand, it is also freeing. As Angelou states"Was it possible that I and all American Blacks had been wrong on other occasions? Could the cutting treatment we often experienced have been stimulated by something other than our features, our hair and color? Was the odor of old slavery so obvious that people were offended and lashed out at us automatically? Ha what we judged as racial prejudice less to do with race and more to do with our particular ancestors' bad luck at having been caught, sold and driven like beasts?" Section 2 (pages 32-58), pg. 35Was the slavery of the Negroid race due to socio-political motives rather than actual physiological disparities between the two races?

Angelou thus faces the typical problem all diasporic individuals encounter: that of hybridity. She is not wholly African, nor is she American. As an African-American, she exists both within and outside the both the constructions of the colonized as well as of the colonizer. In America, she faced discrimination for being African. In Ghana, she faces discrimination for being American.

Questions of identity also plague her son. This is especially apparent in the fight that she has with him regarding where he should live, how he should live and what cultural norms he should abide by. Identity is thus as much a problem for him as it is for her.

The duality and instability of the hybrid identity is thus brought to the fore in All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes. Race and racial hierarchies are also central themes of this work. A primary example would be the employment of a small boy or servant by Angelou and her housemates. Initially hesitant, she allows him to work for her when she hears that he wishes to further his education and is therefore asking for the job. The education he desires, however, is how to be ‘White’. The boy in fact belongs to a wealthy family. Through his employment in Angelou’s household, his family hopes to educate him in being ‘White’ and thereby constructing the “White mask” that so many “mimic men” adorn themselves in.

Race, racial history and questions of identity are thus beautifully depicted in this masterpiece. Its conclusion truly cements the primary theme of homecoming. While taking a trip to the small Ghanaian village of Keta, Angelou is mistaken by some village folk for an old relative, taken away by slave traders several years ago. The open joy at being reunited with a family member and the love and acceptance she experiences in this guise allows her to experience, if only for a fleeting moment, the homecoming she wished to experience that had so far eluded her. Identity, then, is not merely a set of markers: race, class, religion, nation and creed. That is the identity others construct for you. The identity you construct for yourself will remain stable only if it is constructed through introspection rather than searching for external markers.