Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana

“Kwame Essien has written a valuable contribution to the historiography of Brazilian returnees in Africa. While analyzing the place of Brazilian returnees against the backdrop of Ghanaian society and British colonialism, his book also sheds important light on identity formation and the Tabom community’s memory of the historical ties between Brazil and Ghana.”
—Roquinaldo Ferreira, Vasco da Gama Associate Professor, Brown University
 
 

"This is a truly remarkable book. Kwame Essien casts refreshing light on the long, complicated phenomenon of diaspora-homeland relations. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, his text examines an understudied dimension of present-day Ghanaian-Brazilian relations: African perspectives on historical ties with the diaspora, and their place and significance in the conception of nationality. This is a significant contribution to the literature of Africana studies."
—Anani Dzidzienyo, Associate Professor, Africana Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University
 

"Kwame Essien has written a valuable contribution to the historiography of Brazilian returnees in Africa. While analyzing the place of Brazilian returnees against the backdrop of Ghanaian society and British colonialism, his book also sheds important light on identity formation and the Tabom community’s memory of the historical ties between Brazil and Ghana."
—Roquinaldo Ferreira, Vasco da Gama Associate Professor, Brown University
 

"This study of the Tabom is a long-awaited contribution by Kwame Essien to the literature on the African returnees from Brazil. There has been abundant work done on their communities elsewhere in Africa, but no in-depth, book-size scholarly text on Ghana—until now a kind of missing link in this rather fascinating aspect of the Black Atlantic experience."
—João José Reis, Professor of History, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, and author of Divining Slavery and Freedom: The Story of Domingos Sodré, an African Priest in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
 

"This is a well-researched social history of a long-neglected diasporic group in the reverse migration-to-Africa literature. Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana focuses on the lives of individuals and families that defied the one-way script of transatlantic slaving and created community in the “foreign” homeland of the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), all the while longing for connection to kin and memory created in Brazil. Their story has deep implications for studies of belonging, repatriation, and community building among recent diasporic Africans (re)settled in Ghana and in Africa writ large."
—Kwasi Konadu, Professor of History, Borough of Manhattan Community College, and executive director, Diasporic Africa Press
 

"This is a welcome addition to the expanding literature on reverse migrations in the African diaspora. Kwame Essien brings to life the ties between Brazil and Ghana created in the nineteenth century and persisting in the memories of the contemporary Tabom community. By tracing Tabom involvement in anticolonial struggles, land disputes, and modern professions, Essien shows that the African diaspora made important contributions to Africa itself."
—Lisa A. Lindsay, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, author of Captives as Commodities: The Transatlantic Slave Trade