Our Sister Killjoy

Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Black racism and anti-gay bias. 

Sissie is a young Ghanaian woman who is probably in her early 20s in Our Sister Killjoy. Her exact age is never specified. She is called Sissie or Our Sister Killjoy, though she mentions that when she was at school, she was called Mary.

Sissie travels to Europe for her education. She does so at a time when many organizations and European governments were supplying scholarships and funding for African students wanting to get a European education. In theory, this was part of the broader effort of decolonization in Africa, but it was also a way to affirm European educational standards as the best in the world and as aspirational for Africans. Even before she travels to Europe, Sissie is aware that some Black people have a strange, obsequious relationship with Europe, having fully bought into the idea that European culture, education, and even food are the best in the world. 

When she first arrives in Europe, Sissie has a sudden and irrevocable moment where she realizes that Europeans categorize people by race first and foremost. From that moment on, she cannot ever let go of that European framework of racial categorization.