Kwame Mensah
One of the storytelling voices behind African Belief — every piece below carries their name because it was researched, framed, and checked in their voice.
Pieces by Kwame
Adinkra Symbols: What the Akan Signs Mean on City Walls
On a plywood hoarding outside a shuttered bank, someone has painted a bird the size of a door. Its body faces forward, its head turned all the way back, and in its beak is an egg it has lifted from…
Children of Blood and Bone: Film Adaptation Announcement and the Orïsha
The number I wrote down was ten. I had the trailer running in one tab and a dog-eared paperback of Children of Blood and Bone face-down beside the keyboard, and I did the small, slightly obsessive…
The Character Arc and Orisha: What Film Adaptation Changes
There is a question asked in every story meeting, every workshop, every notes call: what does she want, and who is she by the end? It sounds like common sense.
Adinkra Symbols in Urban Murals: The Sentence Behind the Sign
The advice comes with so much goodwill that it feels rude to test it. Put the symbol in the work. You paint, or you letter, or you shoot, and somewhere behind you there is Ghana — a parent, a…
Tomi Adeyemi, Orïsha, and What the Film News Leaves Out
Children of Blood and Bone is not a story from Yoruba religion. It was never trying to be, and its author has been clearer about that than most of her coverage has.
Netflix Releases and African Mythology: What One Number Misses
A multiplex in Lekki on a Friday night seats a few hundred people. Nigeria — a country of more than 200 million — has fewer than 200 cinema screens in total.
Children of Blood and Bone Film Trailer: The Òrìṣà Behind Orïsha
A girl with white hair stands in shallow water, and the water answers her. That image carries the first film trailer for Children of Blood and Bone, Paramount's adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi's 2018…
Children of Blood and Bone: What the Film Announcement Tells You
The advice comes around every time a studio options a novel with African gods in it: check the music credits.
Jungian Archetypes and the African Mother: How Authority Forms
In more than one household I have sat in, an argument has ended the same way. Someone older, usually a woman, says one short sentence, and the room puts the fight down. Nobody voted.