Using all her gifts as a poet, Angelou recounts a period in the 1950s when she joined a community of ex-patriot African Americans in Ghana to search for connection to the continent of her ancestors. Obviously, her true ancestors, torn from their parents and their history, cannot ever be located. While searching Angelou provides a history of the heady days in Ghana just after it became the first independent black African nation. Having visited Ghana twice in the last two years, however, it is sad to see how little of Ghana’s initial promise has come to fruition. June 2008.