44 pages • 1 hour read
Our Sister Killjoy
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Symbols & Motifs
Food
Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Black racism and anti-gay bias.
Food is an important motif in Our Sister Killjoy. While in Europe, Sissie finds she dislikes much of the food she has to eat, which intensifies The Effects of Isolation and Alienation. She misses what is familiar to her, like “plain palm-oil on boiled greens” (120), instead of cold food that lacks the warmth of human connection. It seems like dead food to Sissie, or perhaps undead: In the store, the “vegetables and the fruits that never ever get rotten” (119) unsettle her. Sissie knows other Africans who have spent time in Europe, like Sammy, who speak with effusive longing of the food in Europe. She believes that they are all lying about enjoying it, instead using food to remind people that, having been abroad, they have gained a level of superiority over others in their community.
For Marija, food is an opportunity for connection. She is constantly feeding Sissie, though the only food Sissie particularly likes at Marija’s house is the fruit, especially plums, from her garden. Marija is desperate to connect, but her attempts never fully bridge the gap between her and Sissie. This is in part because Marija’s gifts of food to Sissie are not wholly positive, or even neutral. Marija believes that she is being kind and thoughtful by giving Sissie food, but on a symbolic level, the food is reminiscent of charity or foreign aid. Countries like Ghana often receive aid from European countries. In exchange, European countries exploit African natural resources or interfere in African politics. African countries are kept reliant on aid so that they cannot refuse foreign intervention or resource extraction. Like her country, Sissie receives food from Marija in exchange for her friendship. Their friendship can never exist on an equal playing field, because it has become transactional.
Food also briefly becomes a symbol of the transgressive nature of Sissie and Marija’s relationship. When Marija tells Sissie that she was planning an elaborate lunch for her, Sissie cruelly suggests that it is inappropriate for Marija to cook for another woman—she should only cook for her husband. Here, food is used as a euphemism for sexuality and affection, with Sissie making a covert reference to the time that Marija tried to kiss her.
Animals
Our Sister Killjoy makes many references to animals, especially cats and dogs, forming another important motif in the text. When Sissie and Kunle discuss the heart transplant, he tells her that the doctor experimented on animals before successfully transplanting a human heart. Sissie suggests that Europeans view Black people as less valuable than cats and dogs; they feed their pets good food at the dinner table, which is more than can be said of the colonial European treatment of Black people. Regarding the heart transplant, Sissie wonders if Black people are interchangeable with animal test subjects, but more convenient because their internal anatomy is the same as white people’s. When Kunle dies, Sissie suggests ironically that his death was a “waste” because his heart was not used to keep a white person alive.
Sissie compares Black people who try to assimilate to European standards to dogs who are unquestioningly loyal to their (white) masters. In Bavaria, people see her as an exotic object, forcing her to reckon with her Post-Colonial African Identity. She realizes that if she were to stay in Europe until she was 30, she would become “[a] dog among the masters, the / Most masterly of the / Dogs” (42). She sees the whole political project of African education in Europe as a way to turn Africans into obedient acolytes of European superiority. Arguing with a Black person who has assimilated to European cultural norms is like playing chess “against the dog of the house instead of the master himself” (6).
Skin Color
Skin color symbolizes the persistent issue of racial categorization and discrimination in the text. As one of relatively few Africans in Europe in the 1960s, Sissie is constantly aware of her skin color and the way it impacts how people perceive and treat her. Growing up in Ghana, she was aware of racism and its impacts, but she was unaccustomed to putting people into racial categories based on skin color. In the train station, she abruptly realizes the significance, in European eyes, of her skin color: It allows people to categorize her and make assumptions about who she must be. This moment speaks to The Effects of Isolation and Alienation Sissie experiences, as well as the development of her Post-Colonial African Identity. Her skin color is revealing and concealing. It marks her out as different and allows people to make assumptions about her, but it also conceals her humanity from most of the Europeans she meets, who struggle (or refuse) to see Black people as fully human.
Sissie often thinks about Marija’s skin, which reveals her emotions. Marija blushes red or goes pale depending on what she is thinking and feeling, whereas Sissie’s dark skin provides Marija with no such insight. Sissie sees Marija’s whiteness as a sign of vulnerability, making her transparent to anyone who looks at her. She thinks that being white is “[l]ike being born without your skin or something” (76). She wonders briefly if this inherent vulnerability is to blame for white people’s violent colonial attitudes toward others.
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