Warning: Some spoilers ahead for I May Destroy You season one.
In this op-ed, Teen Vogue's culture and entertainment director Danielle Kwateng explains the importance of Ghanaian heritage in Michaela Coel's “I May Destroy You.”
Until last night, I had never heard Twi spoken on mainstream television.
In Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, the actor plays Arabella “Bella” Essiedu, a social-media-obsessed influencer turned author who is struggling to write her second book after being sexually assaulted. The drama is analogous to Michaela’s real-life sexual assault that happened in 2018 when she was writing the second season of Chewing Gum. In I May Destroy You, Michaela unfurls the complexities of mental health, friendship, love, and agency after a major trauma occurs. Set in East London, the show is a master class on how consent and identity are sometimes tied to self-worth and healing.
But Michaela’s drama is, also, instinctually Ghanaian. In her work, Michaela has consistently told stories through her lens as a first-generation child of Ghanaian immigrants. It informed her strict, Christian home as satire in Chewing Gum, and in I May Destroy You, it informs her friendships, family, and her source of refuge when her world is unrecognizably dark. One of Bella’s best friends Kwame (played by Paapa Essiedu) — who has his own fully-developed storyline about functioning as a gay Black man after trauma — is her rock. Kwame, which means “boy born on Saturday” in Twi, the Ghanaian dialect of the Ashanti people, is the gentle balance in Bella’s friendship trio with Terry Pratchard (played by Weruche Opia), who gives Bella tough love and equally aids in her recovery.
Kwame is kind. He holds Bella’s hand through scary moments, doesn’t judge, and gives her space to make mistakes — sometimes at the detriment of his own healing, having been sexually assaulted as well. Kwame goes with Bella to the police station to report the rape, but he also doesn’t say anything when Bella locks him in her bedroom with a man at a party in her attempt to play a flirty joke. While Terry is extremely supportive of Bella’s healing process, Kwame holds more space for Bella’s hiccups on the way to her getting back to herself. There's an unspoken comfort in her relationship with Kwame, as they fundamentally relate from having Ghanaian upbringings.
No episode better conveys the prominence of Bella’s Ghanaian heritage than episode 10, which premiered this week on HBO. In it, Bella goes to her childhood home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Even before Bella leaves her flat we get a taste of what’s to come when Terry calls Bella’s mother to say happy birthday. Terry immediately says the common Ghanaian greeting of “Ete sen” or “how are you,” on the call — and I flinched.
Never in my life have I heard Twi, the language of my family, spoken on Western television. Yes, I’ve heard Twi in Ghanaian movies, television, and news. But never on a mainstream show (on a major network) have a heard Twi being spoken. I had to pause and process the moment. It hit me that I’ve heard English, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and a number of other languages on American television for years — but to hear the language of my own people felt revolutionary.
Michaela’s genius is that she continually takes up space as herself. Her work stands in contrast to movies and shows that either lazily cast white actors in non-white narratives (Emma Stone's part-Hawaiian and part-Chinese character in Aloha, among many examples) or diminish identity altogether even when it's part of the plot (see: Jennifer Lopez’s Italian-American Maria Fiore in The Wedding Planner). Michaela doesn't choose to bury her cultural identity for a script, instead, she embraces who she is and carefully layers it into the fabric of Bella.
Episode 10 carries on with Bella visiting her mother’s home where she catches up with her brother and helps prepare dinner. So many moments in this episode reflect my childhood in frighteningly similar ways. The “auntie” we don’t remember, the flashbacks of getting McDonald’s as a kid, and even the well-intentioned father whose flaws don’t supersede the love we have for him. Cinematically, the episode could best be compared to Lena Waithe’s Emmy-winning “Thanksgiving” episode on Master of None. Through real-time events and flashbacks, the episode builds upon who Bella is and the source of her strength. Twi is casually spoken throughout as the family dines on baked chicken, jollof rice, and plantains. Here, Ghana shows up not as an afterthought or accessory to Bella’s storyline, but as the manifestation of everything that gives her comfort and security.
For all of its praise, one aspect of I May Destroy that sticks out to me is its level of intimacy in storytelling. The single-person narrative is put under a microscope, analyzing every corner of how one woman builds her life back up after being knocked down. But there is also the story of being a first-generation child who is trying to succeed and persevere in an unkind world; Bella is balancing the performance of being OK with actually being OK. One could argue that the performance (on social media, with friends, etc) is something Bella learned at home, but to be honest, we all do. Michaela reminds us that part of authentic storytelling is not shying away from where we come from, because one way or the other, it will dictate where we go.