The Interrupted Dance: Racial Memory in Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name

Summary

The practice that began in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 of forcibly bringing Africans to perform the exhausting task of working in the American plantations from ‘sun up’ to ‘sun down’, which later blossomed into the transatlantic slave trade that lasted about three centuries, denuded African societies of their most virile members and created the first African diaspora in the Americas. The Africans in this first diaspora were sought after for their physical strength.

The catastrophic collapse of the economies of most independent African nations has in recent times triggered another exodus from the continent. This time, however, the emigration is voluntary and involves the most educated members of the various African states. This brain drain has over the years created a second African diaspora in America and the Western world.

Call Me By My Rightful Name belongs to the growing body of African literature that explores the ramifications of the African presence in the Western world. This novel makes a valuable contribution to the diasporic discourse by examining the important issues of racial memory and the search for one's roots among the Africans in diaspora from two different perspectives: Western (Clinical Psychiatry) and African (Yoruba Ifa). The novel's protagonist, Otis, is an individual with a split personality and dual identities (American and African). He is a normal bubbly American youth until he is destabilized by mysterious drumming only audible to himself.