Reading Questions: Chapter 1: Effia
1.​ What do you think the epigraph means?
2.​ What are 2 things you notice about the family tree?
3.​ What is a prediction you can make about the novel’s plot or themes
based on the family tree and the epigraph?
4.​ p.3: How is the night Effia was born described? How do you think it
will affect her life?
5.​ p. 4: Why does Effia think of Baaba as a tree and Cobbe as a lion?
6.​ p. 6-9: What do we learn about Fante marriage customs in these
pages?
7.​ p. 8-12: Why does Baaba want Effia to hide her period?
8.​ What is the hierarchy of power in the Cape Coast Castle? Who has
the most power and who has the least?
9.​ p. 25 Eccoah tells Effia, “‘There are people down there, you know,”
she said. ‘There are women down there who look like us, and our
husbands must learn to tell the difference.” After she says this, Gaasi
includes Effia’s observation of a line of ants, “Effia watched as a line
of ants passed over a strand of her hair, the shape of it seeming, to
them, to be just another part of the natural world.” How does this
observation relate to Eccoah’s comment about enslaved people in the
dungeons of the castle?
Select 2 questions and write/diagram below:
What is complex about Effia?
What is complex about Baaba?
What is complex about Effia and Baaba’s relationship?
What is complex about James and Effia’s relationship?
Does Effia change or not through this part of her life? Why or why not?
Slavery, memory, resilience, identity, race, class, gender, storytelling, healing, resistance,
trauma, inter generational trauma,
To what extent are identities shaped by oppression?
Body Biography
he first European colonizers arrived in the late 15th century
· The Dutch West India Company operated throughout most of the 18th century. The British African
Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the successor to several earlier organizations of this
type.
· In the late 17th century, the shift from being a gold exporting and slave importing economy to being
a major local slave exporting economy.
· Most rulers, such as the kings of various Akan states engaged in the slave trade, as well as
individual local merchants.
· The Danes remained until 1850, when they withdrew from the Gold Coast. The British gained
possession of all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the 19th century, thus making them the
dominant European power on the Gold Coast.