home.^34 Even where the ideals of multi-racial liberalism seem to be triumphant, the
fleeting nature of such victory calls for a reconsideration of the migrant’s stand. This is
why the “triumphs” can at best be referred to as “small” as they “bring real pleasure, but
they can evaporate and count for little once invasive immigration has been constructed as
an intractable problem with national dimensions” (Gilroy 2004: 146). Moreover, the
excitement of “bringing Ghana home” as seen earlier in “Bloomington” is no less
fugacious. Truly the remarkable demonstration of the inversion of tradition as “place-
based” is commendable (Nezar Alsayyad 2004: 23). One is nevertheless reminded at
once that “a migrant group that re-embeds elsewhere through the reconfiguration and
performance of tradition may be met with hostility by others who feel that their own
tradition and their own authority over locality are being threatened” (Jane Jacobs 2004:
34). The situation can be all the worse when the bid to maintain a white western native
culture unalloyed by the incursion of migrant culture and miscegenation results in an
alterity which is both state-sponsored (Gilroy 2004: 147), and segregating to the point of
quaking the fragile foundations upon which the ideals of contemporary migrancy is
built.^35 This is why home no matter how frightening the challenges the thought of it
provokes is for Anyidoho the only hope:
But against the distant gleam of shooting stars
I chose and will choose again and again
The Homing Call of Earth
I am Earth child turned to ghost
at festival of Moonchildren
my voices heard only as distant calls of other worlds
my steps uncertain trods of alien feet (43)The imperative of return becomes even more glaring in the concluding stanzas of the
volume:
34
Much as the remark is true, it is important to admit that there are exclusionary measures at “home” which
also create a distinct sense of un-homeliness. 35
Even the whole idea of such multicultural existence in the West is permissible only because of the
economic advantage it offers to the host nations. See Gilroy p. 147.