Retrieval of Identity in Postcolonial Ghana in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments

Abstract

Freedom of postcolonial African countries are least experienced by the people. Years of slavery distorted even souls of the people of Africa. Healers were the redeemers of West African natives from the enchantment of imperial influences of westerners. Ghana is a West African nation colonised by the British rulers until 1957. Westernization began to spread among Africans by increasing their basic needs in the name of modernization. Colonial domination replaced traditional medicines with Western medicines. The ideologies imposed by Westerners continued to dominate native Africans even after their countries gained independence. This paper decodes the strategies used by intellectuals to reclaim the lost identity of Ghanaians from their colonial identity. It emphasizes the methods intellectuals used to reunite African people by analysing the events in the novel Fragments by Ayi Kwei Armah.The paper focuses both on the causes and effects oftheefforts of intellects for the identity retrieval of post-colonial nation. It also analyses the disillusionment experienced by the intellects of the society for their deeds.