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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