Gender and the Silences in the Tabon Narrative

ABSTRACT

The Tabon, an Afro-Brazilian returnee community in southern Ghana with slave ancestry are a well-known narrative in Ghanaian historiography. However, amidst the narrative of Bahian roots, their relocation and settlements in Accra and their integration into Gã culture, silences surround the agency and voice of Tabon women. This study reflects on the houses built by people of Tabon descent, referred to as “Brazil houses,” not as an intersection of space and performance but as a window through which female agency and voice are possible. Reading Accra’s urbanisation process through historical modes of analysis, the study reiterates that the urban world of Accra was not formed upon a tabula rasa but was the outcome of a vibrant cosmopolitanism in which the footprints of Tabon women still linger.