Saidiya hartman books6/2/2023 Obruni lurked like an undertone in the hustle of street peddlers. It was the shorthand my new Ghanaian friends used to describe me to their old friends. Clearly, I was not Fanti, or Ashanti, or Ewe, or Ga. In the jumble of my features, no certain line of origin could be traced. Old and new worlds stamped my face, a blend of peoples and nations and masters and slaves long forgotten. Who else sported vinyl in the tropics? My customs belonged to another country: my too-fast gait best suited to navigating the streets of Manhattan, my unfashionable German walking shoes, my unruly tufts twisted into two French braids, fuzzy and unfurling in the humid air. My appearance confirmed it: I was the proverbial outsider. As the words weaved their way through the crowd and landed on me, I imagined myself in their eyes: an alien tightly wrapped in the skin of a blue rain slicker, the big head bursting from its navy pod. They summoned me, "obruni, obruni," as if it were a form of akwaaba (welcome), reserved just for me. Three children gathered at the bus station shouted it, giggling as it erupted from their mouths, tickled to have spotted some extraterrestrial fallen to earth in Ghana. It was sharp and clear, as it rang in the air, and clattered in my ear making me recoil. As I disembarked from the bus in Elmina, I heard it.
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