ABSTRACT
Akousa (Fante (Ghana), born on a Sunday) was the author's sister-friend Sarah's older sister. Akousa and Sarah's sistren relationship was analogous to the author's relationship with her sister Ann. They all grew up in the color-conscious English and/or American African diasporas at times feeling very inadequate about our light-skinnedness. Seeing Blackness as "a consciousness or a state of mind," Akousa identifies very strongly as a Black woman. However, by virtue of her skin color and her seeming métisse appearance, constituents of both the White and Black communities outside the safe space of her own Liverpool community challenge her chosen identity. As a White woman in this society and comin' from where she comes from, Akousa thinks her mum has done really well. Because she has seen other people who have had dire problems with their White mother.
