MAY QUARTEY May 1921 by her daughter LIZ
I describe myself as a human being, but culturally I am Ghanaian. As a child I had always been aware of the way people looked at me and talked about me. In those days I was unsure what I was, because I was living in a white society with very few mixed-race people around me. Yes of course I had my family, but I didn’t have any awareness of what I was or sense of identity. I think my mum would be OK about my identifying as Black because she would understand that our cultural heritage came more from our father than her. We mixed more with my Dad’s family. My Mum wanted us to be whoever we wanted to be, so I would class myself as Ghanaian with Lancashire. (laughter) I have to put that in because I cook Lancashire dishes that my Mum taught me as I watched her, and I cook African food. My Dad cooked all the African food and my Mum cooked all the English food. She didn’t cook very much after she had a nervous breakdown and what she did cook wasn’t like she did before she became ill. Even so I can’t say there isn’t anything about my white side of the family which is more than the Black side, but my soul identity is Ghanaian. When I first went to my secondary school, within a few weeks as we were queuing for lunch, another mixed-race girl pushed in in front of me and I said to her ‘Oi you, don’t push in front of me’. She turned around and punched me in the stomach. We got dragged out of the line and taken to the lower school headmistresses’ office where I promptly threw up because she had punched me so hard and they made her clean it up. We both got into trouble but were best mates after that. I’m not quite sure of her parentage but her sisters had all been through that school and had all been very tough, so she was following suit. She was kind of the cock of the first year and took me under her wing. After that I never had a problem with anybody – because she would beat them up for me, so I never had to fight for
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