ABSTRACT
Froad hopes for an act of cultural 'repossession' at the carved tomb of Queen Amanishakete, a monument preserving 'the ancient creativity of this Negro kingdom, ergo, of his race'. Spiritual repossession of the past was one approach to exorcising the trauma of slavery, and the area has become a fruitful field for Caribbean writing. The old slave Uncle Tom puts down spiritual roots in new earth, creating the negro spiritual out of his exile, but his children mock his acceptance as weakness. The mysteries and intuitions of Rights of Passage lead on to Masks, the central book of the trilogy, set in Africa. Kumasi was the centre of the Ashanti kingdom from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth century, the centre of the Asante Confederation, an ambiguous emblem of African splendour, controlling the flow of gold, ivory, kola and slaves.
