Poetry as a Travelogue: AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues as a Journey back to the African People’s Fragmented History

AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues (1993) is the fourth collection issued by the Ghanaian poet Kofi Anyidoho. The book represents an important literary endeavour through which the poet reflects from a pan African perspective on the mutilation of the black race throughout history. This article analyses the collection of poems from a postcolonial theoretical lens, arguing that it serves as a poetic travelogue through which Anyidoho revisits the fragmented, traumatic history of African peoples and highlights their enduring resilience. This is done through the concept of Sankofa that allows the reader to capture the particular interest that the poet devotes throughout the entire collection to the conditions of the descendants of Africans in the Caribbean. The survey has thus allowed to shed light on the people’s enduring challenge against Western hegemonic tutelage allowing them to progressively rise up from the endemic subaltern conditions that is their lot.