Comfort Herself

A book for thoughtful adolescents who might consider the dichotomy for the black child born in this country of a black parent and a white parent. Comfort must decide for herself where she belongs. Her white mother has been killed in a road accident and her black father had left years before to return to his homeland. Respectable English grandparents expect Comfort to conform to a life of private school and conventional behavior. When Comfort plucks up courage to contact her father she finds herself whisked away to Ghana, to the native compound. She becomes her black grandmother's prize; ingenuity and initiative is expected but there is very little future for a woman. Comfort struggles to balance all the attractions and disadvantages of two possible lifestyles and eventually decides what she wants. A challenging story. It moves quickly and is not linguistically demanding but the content raises several questions for young people to consider.