By Amma Appiah

I am a first generation American from Ghana. I recently visited my parents in Ghana and I decided to vlog (video record) my twelve-day trip. In one of the vlogs I uploaded to YouTube, I was showing some of the cloth I had just purchased from the market. I mispronounced the name of one of the cloths and a fellow Ghanaian made sure to criticize me for it. He said:

The Ashanti nation goes down in history as one of the fiercest African nations to resist European colonialism. Second only to the famed Zulu warriors. Today, the Ashanti display such cultural pride; images of them cause a yearning for the days of old. What a wonder it must have been exist in the colorful, golden pre-colonial Ashanti kingdom. Among their fiercest leaders, one stands out more than others. Not just because she was a woman—because she was prepared to fight just when everyone else wanted to give in. In spite of the fall of the Ashanti, their fierce resistance earned them a place of high esteem even among the same empire that was massacring their people.