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The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim review – an ambitious debut

A restless young woman growing up in Germany with Ghanaian parents feels caught between two worlds

While The God Child is a debut novel, its author is already well known in the art world. Like John Berger, to whom the book is dedicated, Nana Oforiatta Ayim is an art historian and critic unafraid of challenging the establishment. Her pioneering works range from an open-source, pan-African cultural encyclopedia project to a mobile museum and, most recently, the curation of the first ever Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice biennale. Ayim’s desire to question assumptions about African art (and the continent in general) is shared by Maya, the protagonist of her coming-of-age story set between Germany, Britain and Ghana.

When the novel begins, Maya is living in Germany, the only child of Ghanaian parents. Her father is a reserved and bookish doctor, while her shopaholic mother, Yaa Agyata, is outgoing and gregarious. Yaa is Ayim’s most vividly painted character: loud and flamboyant, she is described as having “gold trapped beneath her skin” and a voice “peppery with chicken stew”. Comfortable with herself, she doesn’t care what others think of her - including her daughter, who finds her embarrassingly disorderly next to her German friends with their “tall, blonde, neat parents”.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2t37DOq
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