Kwasi Boadi

Obibini Blackman: Don't Play That Song - For Kemet's Sake Kwasi Boadi

In case you are wondering why I am where I am at this moment - locked up like a caged bird in police custody - I've got to take you to where it all began, that cold New Year's Eve night in Canada... This breakthrough novel follows a Ghanaian student, Aso Naba, who undergoes an Afrocentric transformation in the United States and pays a heavy price in the process. Naba is from a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He is admitted to a master's degree program in microbiology at Lawrence University in Canada, and at a Christmas Eve party for international students, he overhears something that will change his life forever. Kevin "Kemet" Johnson from Jamaica is speaking about the historic accomplishments of the black man, which stuns Naba, who has never before heard anything substantively positive about his race. Eventually the two strike up a friendship that brings them together in Washington, DC where they meet during a "Free Mandela" African Liberation Day rally where Naba learns more about the true history of the black man. But tragedy strikes, and finally disillusioned and depressed, Naba decides to return to Ghana to be an activist and disseminate what he had learned from Kemet about the emancipation of the black man. He secures a job as a waiter in a local restaurant to earn his fare back home. Following a tip by a disgruntled worker, immigration officials raid the restaurant in search of undocumented immigrants. Naba escapes and decides he has had enough, and heads for home. Little does he know the turn things will take upon his arrival in Ghana.