My late father used to be a G
He wasn’t a gangsta, he was a warrior from Kumasi, Ghana, region & kingdom of Asante
The first Sub-Saharan African country in 1957 to achieve a true democracy
by freeing its Black body away from the tight circulation cutting chains of the economic enslaving British Monarchy .
By plane, boat
Or walk down to the wilderness sea? Like Li-Young Lee…
My father mimicked Eddie Murphy from the “Coming to America” movie, when he came to the so-called land of the free to find his Black American queen, my doting mother, Cathyann, in Detroit, the Motor City.
I still remember your cool African accent, your powerful black hands, the smell of your old spice cologne, or how you never wanted my brother, Kwadwo, and I to be home and alone
You forced my brother and I to come with you to work at your party store and taught us how to be young black entrepreneurs
The right way, not the wrong way, like some of our friends who went deep down the wrong path like a sunken raft
By learning the genocidal war crafts of drugs, murder and guns..
Many of them would either die young, become addicts, or be sentenced to hard and heavy years by the tonne
Something I’ve never understood was how tough you had to be, to go back to work the next day after getting shot near the top of your head in our store’s crime infested neighborhood to ensure that our family had a life that was prosperous and good relative to others living in the hood.
Something I have always wanted to share with, you, is how I regretted the times I got mad and argued with you, even if you deserved it, for the insane fits you sometimes put the family through
I used to dream of our immediate family reuniting with our extended family in Ghana, if It were to happen now, I would have to do it without you beside me physically, but you’ll always be with me spiritually.
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