VVVV BOOK REVIEW

Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana: The Tabom,

Slavery, Dissonance of Memory, Identity, and Locating
Home
KWAME ESSIEN
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016, Ruth Simms Hamilton
African Diaspora Series; pp. 364, $49.95 paper.

Over 12 million Africans were captured, shipped over to the Americas, and sold
into slavery during the transatlantic slave trade, creating one of the most emblem-
atic and studied diasporas of modernity. Still, during the times of slavery, a sig-
nificantly smaller number of Africans and some of their descendants returned
to various places in West Africa, forming communities with unique transatlantic
identities. In this book, Ghanaian historian Kwame Essien explores the history
and identities of this “reverse diaspora” by focusing on the Tabom, a small and
understudied group whose ancestors relocated from Brazil to Ghana during
the nineteenth century. The author weaves issues of European colonization in
West Africa, slavery in Brazil and West Africa, local economy and social history,
regional and transatlantic migration, and land tenure disputes in the Gold Coast
with oral stories in arguing that the Tabom have constructed a dual identity (Gha-
naian and Brazilian) based on historical memory, a memory that at times can be
“dissonant.” Essien convincingly argues that despite weak connections with con-
temporary Brazil, home for the Tabom is both in Ghana and in Brazil.
Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana is the first book-length systematic study
of the Tabom, superseding previous historical accounts in depth and scope
(Schaumloeffel 2008) and offering a solid scholarly context to various existing
noninterpretive works (e.g., Diaz 2016). The author skillfully combines sources
from archival materials from Ghana, Brazil, Nigeria, and England (among which
colonial records on land tenure in the former Gold Coast stand out) with dozens
of interviews to explore how past events register in memory. Although this book

136

This work originally appeared in Journal of West African History, 4.1, Spring 2018, published by Michigan
State University Press.
 Book Review ! 137

is a direct development of Essien’s (2010) doctoral research, it is also a result of his

larger preoccupation with reverse migrations from the Americas to Ghana (e.g.,
Essien 2008, 2009). Overall, the book contributes to literature about returnees
from Brazil to West Africa, and to broader debates on slavery and cultural circu-
lation in the Atlantic basin.
The book is organized in three sections in chronological sequence and flanked
by an introduction and a brief conclusion. The first section, “From Brazil to
Ghana,” consists of five chapters covering the “first leg of migrations from Brazil
directly to Ghana or to Nigeria and later to Ghana” (xxxi). I have heard many ref-
erences to this “stopover” in Nigeria while studying the music and religion of the
Tabom and was pleased to learn in this section about the reasons for these arriv-
als in Lagos, the returnee’s motivations to stay in Nigeria or to move on to other
West African locations, what made Accra and its people particularly attractive to
the returnees, and the challenges posed by the British colonizers to the returnees.
Essien explains all these events in detail, how they are remembered by the Tabom
and how they contribute to building a multi-sited sense of belonging.
The three chapters of the second section, “Contradictions of Return,” cover the
history of settlement in Accra, including the integration of returnees and their
descendants into the Ga group, their contributions to Accra society,  and
their ironic participation in slavery. The author’s discussion of the “enabling con-
ditions” that facilitated this participation (the widespread practice of slavery in
the Gold Coast and the double standards of the British who pushed abolition-
ism while practicing slavery) is particularly strong and contributes to paint a
more complex and accurate picture of many of the emancipated returnees, which
resonates with the findings of other studies of slavery in West Africa and Brazil
(Kelley 2016; Mann and Bay 2001; Reis 1993). The discussion could have been
strengthened by acknowledging that some of the returnees already owned slaves
before their return to Ghana (Parés and Castillo 2015). The main arguments here
are that, in presenting themselves publicly, the Tabom emphasize memories about
their contributions to Accra and ignore memories of slavery.
The third section, “Diaspora in Full Circle,” spans the last two chapters and cov-
ers the Tabom’s “yearning for Brazil” and how the “ex-slaves and Tabom remem-
bered, forgot, ignored, performed, and negotiated their ties to both Ghana and
Brazil” (xxxv). The discussion of this third stage of transatlantic movement (i.e.,
actual and desired re-returns to the Brazil) represents the author’s most fresh
contribution to African diasporic debates. Through the story of the unfulfilled
promise of the Brazilian government to invite the Tabom chief to Brazil, Essien
shows the importance of Brazil in the imaginary of the Tabom, the complicated
relations between the Tabom and the Brazilian Embassy in Ghana, and Brazilian

This work originally appeared in Journal of West African History, 4.1, Spring 2018, published by Michigan
State University Press.
 138 " Book Review

governments’ economic interests in Africa and their desire to address questions

of race back home.
With these myriad interconnected arguments, this impressive book presses
home its main thesis of a Tabom dual identity constructed through consonant
and dissonant memories. Essien illustrates the central role of memory by showing
its relationship with issues of land ownership, a theme cutting across the history of
the returnees and their descendants. The author documents instances when his-
torical memory—particularly that connecting with Brazilian ancestors—helped
the Tabom prevail in land dispute cases in colonial courts (chapter 5). Memory
in these cases is nurtured and even performed. Another example of the book’s
strengths is the way in which the author weaves the Tabom history with that of
other groups present in the Gold Coast, namely the Ga community who hosted
them, the British colonizers, and Nigerians settlers. This allows Essien to unpack
many complicated issues such as political alliances and entangled family geneal-
ogies. My only criticism is the author’s relatively light engagement with Brazilian
literature. As a consequence, the author misses the opportunity to engage anal-
ogous works on the Brazilian communities in Benin (Guran 1999) and in Nige-
ria (Cunha 2012) that could have deepened the discussion of interconnections
between returnees along the West African coast. Another consequence was the
author’s tendency to characterize the Brazilian experience of returnees as being
mainly agrarian (the quintessential slave plantation society) (198, 199). As shown
by Parés and Castillo (2015) and Reis (1993)—who the author actually cites—the
Brazilian experience of most returnees was actually an urban one. These issues,
however, do not detract from Essien’s main thesis.
The book is interspersed with personal stories that make it entertaining and
illustrate the experience of the returnees and their descendants. One of the char-
acters is Ferku, a freed slave from Brazil who settled in Nigeria and who later
married Yawah, a Ghanaian Tabom woman. Their love story is a vivid illustration
of the fluid connections between the Tabom and Agudas (the Tabom counterpart
in Nigeria), attachment to their new homes, the importance of land ownership,
and their unending yearning for home. Read this book to learn how this and
other three stories unfold. This book is an obligatory reference for those inter-
ested in the Tabom and other returnee-descendant communities in West Africa
and a valuable reading for experts and students of diasporas and black Atlantic
culture and history.

Juan Diego Díaz

University of California, Davis

This work originally appeared in Journal of West African History, 4.1, Spring 2018, published by Michigan
State University Press.
 Book Review ! 139

REFERENCES
Cunha, Manuela Carneiro de. 2012 (1985). Negros, Estrangeiros: Os Escravos Libertos
e sua Volta à África [Blacks, Foreigners: Freed Slaves and their Return to Africa].
Second edition, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Diaz, Juan Diego, ed. 2016. Tabom Voices: A History of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian
Community in their Own Words. Brazilian Embassy in Ghana. Accra, Ghana:
Legend.
Essien, Kwame. 2008. “African-Americans in Ghana: Success and their Contributions
to ‘Nation Building’ since 1985.” In The United States and West Africa: Interactions
and Relations, edited by Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola. Rochester, NY: University
of Rochester Press.
______. 2009. “A Abertura da Casa Brasil: A History of the Tabom People, Part 1.” In
Back to Africa Vol. 1: Afro-Brazilian Returnees and Their Communities, edited by
Kwesi Kwaa Prah. Cape Town, South Africa: CASAS Book Series.
______. 2010. “African Diaspora in Reverse: The Tabom People in Ghana, 1820s–2009.”
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Guran, Milton. 1999. Agudás: os “Brasileiros” do Benim (Agudás: The “Brazilians” of
Benin). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Nova Fronteira.
Kelley, Sean. 2016. The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from
Sierra Leone to South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mann, Kristin, and Edna G. Bay, eds.  2001. Rethinking the African Diaspora in the
Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil. Portland, OR:
Frank Cass.
Parés, Luis Nicolau, and Lisa Earl Castillo. 2015. “José Pedro Autran e o Retorno
de Xangô” (José Pedro Autran and the Return of Shango). Religião & Sociedade 35,
no. 1: 13–43.
Reis, João Jose. 1993. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia.
Translated by Arthur Brakel. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Schaumloeffel, Marco Aurelio. 2008. Tabom: The Afro-Brazilian Community in Ghana.
Accra, Ghana: Custom Books Publishing.

This work originally appeared in Journal of West African History, 4.1, Spring 2018, published by Michigan
State University Press.