Caught between Ghana and America: this film tells a new immigrant story

Brut America

"I wanted to show what my Black looks like."  Filmmaker Nana Mensah spoke to Brut about digging into her own roots to tell the story of an immigrant caught between Ghana and America...

Transcript

00:00None of my aunties like diet, you know, like nobody is interested in like counting calories.

00:07That is very much kind of a Western oppressive.

00:18For Ghanaian women, for the most part, you know, the curvier the better, you know, like

00:23the bigger, the thicker the thighs, you know, the sweeter the juice or whatever.

00:28And so that and that reinforcement caused me to be quite ignorant of body image issues

00:37up until my teens.

00:39How much does it weigh?

00:41You know, I didn't check, but I think it should be fine.

00:44Get on the scale.

00:45I hand you the bag.

00:48Get on it.

00:50Oh, I don't weigh myself.

00:55Why not?

01:04I think Ghanaians know how to tell a story.

01:06They know how to spin a yarn.

01:07I am the child of Ghanaian American immigrants, and I think it was really interesting and

01:12important for me to speak to that in this film.

01:17I think a lot of times when you talk about immigrant stories or first generation stories,

01:22there's a lot of strife, there's a lot of trauma.

01:24But I wanted to tell a story that had some joy and some humor kind of laced into that

01:30narrative, because that was my experience.

01:42So where's your mother?

01:43Pardon?

01:44Where's the body?

01:45Well, Auntie...

01:46Auntie Patience.

01:47She was cremated in the box.

01:50Hey!

01:51She was cremated.

01:53We take our funerals very seriously.

01:55They are like weddings in terms of the production value.

02:00There is a cameraman, and there's food, and there's booze, and there's dancing, and there's

02:04a DJ.

02:05So in that way, you know, you look at a Western funeral, which is everybody in black, everybody

02:10very somber, you know, a lot of silence, a lot of quiet, and that is the opposite of

02:17what my experience had been of a funeral prior.

02:20Julia, what do we say?

02:23Sorry.

02:24Thanks, Julia.

02:25Thanks for coming.

02:26Yeah.

02:27And then in terms of hair, that's an ongoing thing.

02:31I mean, I think, you know, obviously Ghana is a former colony, so of course we have a

02:36colonial mindset that we're still trying to free ourselves from.

02:40But you know, I think that weaves and wigs and straight hair is obviously a real, it's

02:49a hot-button item in terms of black culture, and I just wanted to speak to somebody who

02:56felt like she needed to look a certain way to conform and get by, and then decided to

03:03shed that and, you know, kind of come closer to herself towards the end of the film.

03:13I wanted to show what my black looks like, and that, you know, being black is not a monolith.

03:19I think a lot of times when you speak about a high-achieving person, a high-achieving

03:26black person, a high-achieving black woman in a white space, a lot of times, like, race

03:34or racism kind of becomes the narrative, or that is like what is discussed, and that didn't

03:40interest me.

03:41Well, this looks like a family affair.

03:43No, everyone's just black.

03:47Of course, racism is incredibly insidious, and there are ways in which it becomes, you

03:54know, the kind of pink elephant in the room, but I just didn't feel like that was her story.

04:01I just didn't feel like the need to kind of put the white gaze into the film.

04:05I didn't need that there, I think, and it felt like a relief watching that.

04:11And so, I decided to tell this story in order to kind of serve that and combat the narrative

04:17that there is just one way to be black, because I think that really traumatized me in my youth.

04:22When I was young, I didn't know how to speak, but now I know how to speak.

04:34Making the film changed my perspective on my culture and my parents' culture, because

04:40once I started to share it, for example, my producers, three out of my four producers

04:46are not Ghanaian.

04:48So, for them, there were certain things that I had to explain that were so foreign to them,

04:55and so there was a way in which I was seeing my culture through somebody else's eyes and

05:01things that I had taken for granted my entire life, you know, were not the norm for most

05:07people.

05:07And weirdly, even though I've been raised here and, you know, I very much straddle both

05:12worlds, it was kind of delightful to, you know, revisit Ashanti culture, Ghanaian culture

05:21anew through the eyes of my producers and then the editor.

05:34The more narratives that we can add, you know, the better off we are.

05:39I think the less ignorant we become as a people, as a nation.

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