The God Child

October 7, 2019
Ayim’s promising but uneven debut follows Ghanian expatriate Maya through her childhood and young adulthood in stultifying German society. Growing up in Germany and the U.K. during the 1970s and ’80s, with sporadic visits to Ghana, Maya is brought up in a wealthy, educated home and is fluent in both English and German. However, she is considered a foreigner in both European and Ghanian society and in the communities where she lives and attends school. After Maya’s father leaves the family when she’s in grade school, Maya’s beautiful and gregarious mother takes over the task of raising Maya and her cousin, Kojo, and tells them stories of their illustrious royal ancestors. While Maya is obedient, strives to fit in, and tries to ignore her peers’ racist remarks, Kojo’s impulsiveness makes him a target of bullies at school (and even at home). The narrative culminates in a visit to Ghana, where an adult Maya witnesses Kojo’s anguished struggle to establish a museum in Accra that he hopes will restore their family’s dynastic cultural lineage. While Ayim perceptively digs into the fragmented nature of family, colonialism, and transnational identity, these threads never combine to form a cohesive whole. Despite electric prose, sharp cultural allusions, and a charismatic protagonist, Ayim’s premise remains frustratingly ambiguous.

Starred review from February 1, 2020
"In every generation of our family, there was always one appointed to knowledge from the earliest stages, to see what others could not, a nayme akola, a god child." For Maya, of Ghanaian royalty, this legacy is both a burden and a source of pride. Living as an expat in late-twentieth-century Germany and England with her indifferent father and beautiful and commanding mother, Maya is keenly aware of her heritage as the granddaughter of a Ghanaian king, and she chafes at the casually patronizing racism expressed by classmates and teachers. But it is not until Kojo joins their family that she becomes aware of just how powerful and potentially dangerous her inheritance can be. As Kojo grows into his eventual role as the god child and clan leader, Maya ponders her role in an extended family she barely knows and a culture that is both alien and her home. As she shares with Kojo the hidden aspects of their family heritage, she clashes with her mother, whose attachment to class and clan privilege are not what Maya and Kojo envision for their ideal post-colonial Ghana. Ayim's debut is a beautifully told story of family secrets and conflicting cultural expectations(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)