This book is ‘a journey into the politics of memory in Cape Coast and Elmina’ (p. 2), towns which host two of the most famous remaining castles built by Europeans for the purposes of their trade. In recent years, these castles have attracted much touristic attention, especially from African Americans in search of their roots. Holsey is interested in the consequent cross-cultural dialogue between locals and visitors, to which each party brings its different historical experiences, values and aims. She particularly wishes to examine how this ‘Afro-Atlantic dialogue’ has affected local memory of the slave trade. Holsey's main argument is that, until the 1990s, the slave trade was ‘sequestered’ (i.e. distanced or silenced from Ghanaian public discourse, though the choice of this particular word was not very explicitly explained), hence the uneasy dialogue between Ghanaians and African Americans, for whom slavery and the slave trade are of central importance.

Her book is part of a growing literature on an evolving ‘black Atlantic’ discourse, and especially on the place of Africans in it. Its main contribution is in explaining the reasons behind the silencing of the slave trade in Ghana. Although short of a comprehensive explanation, Holsey identifies some key factors, such as issues of moral responsibility, and the perceived need to contest colonial stereotypes, which commonly used slavery and the slave trade in order to ‘prove’ African ‘backwardness’. She rightly places most emphasis on the living heritage of domestic slavery, which is brought up by any mention of the slave trade. Since these issues still carry practical implications for descendants of the enslaved, Ghanaians view them as highly sensitive, and prefer to silence them altogether.

Despite some original and useful insights, the book does not entirely fulfill its stated objectives. One problem is a blurred and inconsistent unit of discussion, as Holsey shifts between the original focus on Cape Coast and Elmina, wider but undefined coastal identities, and Ghana as a whole. She points to how important the ‘north’, as the source area for the slaves, is to the shaping of a ‘southern’ identity as not being victims of enslavement, but does not fully integrate the local and national contexts in a way which would permit a deeper understanding of the politics of memory, and also a better appreciation of its historical dynamics. For Holsey there is basically a single local memory prior to the ‘Atlantic conversations’. This pre-existing memory of the slave trade, conceived as essentially unchanging, is examined in the first part of the book, entitled ‘Sequestering the Slave Trade’. Each chapter examines a different site of memory, such as family and community histories, and history teaching in schools. The second part, entitled ‘Centering of the Slave Trade’, focuses on the impact of the diaspora tourism industry, and on how local memory has been modified in consequence. Despite continuities in Ghanaians' attitudes towards the slave trade, Holsey is optimistic about ‘new possibilities for a discursive mobilization of history within emancipatory projects’ (p. 23). However, one should be cautious of the danger of over-emphasizing the importance of the slave trade. Ironically, the coast of Ghana is now identified with the slave trade precisely because of the existence of many castles there, but its importance in the slave trade was smaller than areas to the east, in the modern states Benin and Nigeria. Furthermore, Elmina and Cape Coast castles were not originally built for the purpose of the slave trade, although they were adapted to its needs in the eighteenth century.

Apart from the interest in the place of the slave trade in public discourse, whether at the margins or the center, there are additional important questions which might have been addressed, such as: what elements of the slave trade are being silenced, which social groups keep more silent about these issues and why, and, since the book is about fashioning of memory, what are the various styles and modes of silence? Scholarly lieux des mémoires – academic historiography, textbooks and teaching in practice – are important in the construction and dissemination of collective memory, yet Holsey lumps them together, and assumes a simple hierarchy between them. Another weakness of this book, especially for historians, is the thin basis of evidence on which wide generalizations are made. Interesting as the latter may be, they need to be validated. Can an argument about the silencing of the slave trade in Ghanaian historiography be restricted to one single historian, albeit one of central importance – Adu Boahen? Can the silence in history teaching in schools be based on the single case of Miss Mensah's class at a Senior Secondary School for girls in Elmina? A fuller analysis of the fashioning and refashioning of the memories of the slave trade in Ghana remains to be written.