Sankofa
Reflecting back and Onwards
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All ENG201 students are required to do written reflections of their semester. The concept of Sankofa will guide both how and why we do this required assignment in this class.
Visually and symbolically, Sankofa is represented as the mythic bird that flies forward but is constantly looking backward with an egg in her mouth (see the image at the left). The egg symbolizes the future. In the Akan language in Ghana, the concept is expressed as: "se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki" which translates to "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot." Sankofa means that you need to reach back into what and who you “usedta be,” take the best of what your past has to teach you, and use all that to achieve your full potential in the future. |
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Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or have been stripped of, we can reclaim, revive, preserve, and (re)present. At its core, Sankofa is what final reflections offer us: a chance to look backward in order to simultaneously move forward.
