It is not just geography

09 Apr 2025

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In Portugal for an artistic residency at Casa Mísia, the Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and speaker Nana-Ama Danquah will talk with human rights activist and philanthropist Myriam Taylor about the project she intends to develop during her stay in the country.

Danquah wants to write a travel memoir documenting the Ghanaian influence in Portugal and vice versa. “The expected impact of this work on the reader is an expanded understanding of the cultural exchange that took place between the peoples of this part of West Africa and the Portuguese navigators who were there ostensibly to explore,” she explains.

Best known for her memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression, the writer will share some details with the public about her new research, which starts at the emblematic Elmina Castle (Fortaleza de São Jorge da Mina), built in the 15th century by the Portuguese to protect the gold trade before becoming the largest centre of the transatlantic slave trade in the region — today Ghana, her native country. The writer will also discuss the reasons that sparked her interest in Portugal. Danquah’s family emigrated to the United States when she was a child. While learning Spanish, she discovered similarities with her native tongue. It was her grandmother who taught her that the words she recognised actually came from Portuguese.

Danquah has been to Lisbon before, where she took an intensive Portuguese language course, visited monuments and talked to several people. The result was a report for National Geographic titled “How Black travelers are reclaiming Portugal”, in which she points out how Black Americans seeking to escape racism at home are being drawn to the country's capital, despite its founding role in the transatlantic slave trade.

A possible modern “return” to Portugal that signifies at once an “acknowledgement of trauma and a crucial step in healing, a reclaiming of joy” will also be a theme of the conversation.

 

9 April, at 7 pm
KEF - Rua de Santa Catarina, 9
Session in English
Subject to capacity