Akwantu, anibuei ne sikasem: Asante women's critical literacy of contemporary space

For Black women, the power of spatial configurations in our everyday social practices and ideological constructions of place and identity cannot be denied, and yet, we are not necessarily literate in the political language of space and how it affects our power struggles, daily social practices, and identity constructions. As a Black womanist-feminist architect, who has always lived in African and diasporic cities, I have experienced and witnessed discrimination by design of a predominantly Western "man-made" built environment. For this reason, I believe it is important to develop a critical spatial literacy on women of African descent's spatial experiences of which there is a dearth of research and literature.; To this end, I conducted research on how matrilineal Asante women's household configurations, social practices, and sense of place are affected by migration to a city like Accra, which is constituted from Western colonial and capitalist spatiality. The study entailed developing a theoretical framework of critical spatial literacy; exploratory interviewing of six Akan women (see video results on CD); conducting a compressed ethnographic field study that included interviewing thirty-two Akan women, as well as one Akan man, and surveying 103 Ghanaian men and women; analyzing qualitative and quantitative data with software; and tailoring the analysis discussion by specifically focusing on fifteen migrant Asante women's experiences; however, inflecting them with information from the other data, as well as from my own interview.; The research results indicate that Asante women's literacy of contemporary space is about capitalist globalization in every sense of the word---before and particularly since colonial days---and the persistent movement of Asantes in the quest for money and eye-opening experiences that enlighten, civilize, and re-constitute the Asante self. In other words, life is about akwantu, anibuei ne sikasem (travel, civilization and money matters), thus, it is about the quintessential economic globalization story of political emergence out of dynamic social systems that are subject to the forces of time-space compression and all interrelated cultural change. The women's narratives on travel, change, money, friendships, work, faith, awareness, education, family, and identity, vividly illustrate the spatial fluidity and interconnectivity of their lives.