Lordsfield Anani Dzidzienyo and I roomed together in my senior year at Williams. He was charismatic, engaging, complex and unpretentious, the creature of multiple cultures. A youth in the generation that brought Kwame Nkrumah to power, he’d received a classical English education at the elite Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast. He was first of all African, introducing his less sophisticated suite mates to kente cloth and the wisdom of the ancestors. “The frog,” he would intone sagely, “does not eat peppers for the lizard to sweat.”

He was ardently nationalist and anti-colonial. As an evening of undergraduate libation progressed on an icy February night, he could elide into the persona of an imaginary radical in an imaginary public square, where he would whip up the masses. “We sang British patriotic songs,” he would exclaim with rising passion, “Britons never shall be slaves. But we WERE slaves!” The revolutionary rhetoric would soar from there. In many ways, he was culturally English—knew more about English history than anyone else I knew and quoted Shakespeare at length. He was also one of the small cadre of worldly West Africans who’d somehow found their way to the small College in the Berkshires. At least one of them allegedly sent his laundry to London by diplomatic courier pouch. The local cleaners on Spring Street couldn’t get the shirt collars right.

Nani and I lost touch after college, but mainly I remember the twinkle in his eye, the cackle of his laugh, his slight bemusement (and, I imagine, older-brotherly amusement) at our American insularity, his sensitivity, his generosity of spirit, and the way he so enthusiastically embraced life. He was a unique and precious guy. A gift to those who knew him.

Michael McGill

Sure, it was a thrill to march once again with my reunion class at the 2015 Commencement. The weekend was great fun, but after all that pomp and circumstance, I felt it somehow was not complete, still missing that certain...oomph. Of course it was, I had not yet seen Professor Anani. I ducked into Churchill House, just in case, and there he was. I had never seen his office before. For the love of books, it was a sight to behold.

In 1979, I was living in Spanish House at Brown and I noticed a class had started holding its meetings in the conference room near the main entrance. Although I’d had classes at French House, or even in a Professor’s living room, here on Prospect Street, something quite unusual was taking place. Students trickled in early to schmooze with the professor before class! I had no inkling as to what the course was about, but I caught vivid tidbits, and references to particular regional habits. The conversations were fascinating. This teacher seemed to egg them on while elegantly holding court, perhaps interjecting a pointed question here and there, but mostly just listening with his eyebrows raised.

Later I was introduced to Anani at Brown although I did not take his classes, misguided student that I was at the time. I moved to NYC in 1981 and when I met Rose-ann she opened her heart to me, and we have been close ever since. I am moved by the profound tributes pouring in here.

Anani was someone who got to know you so well that he could remember obscure details about family members of yours, even those that he had never met, but had only heard about in conversations. No matter what the subject, every conversation was sparkling. Anani was the ultimate people person. He knew so many people, especially his Brown family, that he sometimes assumed that we must know each other, so he might be pleased to see that we are finally meeting here.

Anani was a meticulous listener. It doesn’t surprise me that his music collection is being archived as well as his books. As a musician, you rarely find someone who can be open and truly listen. When Anani was in the house, he brought good vibes to spare. I had the joy, pride, and privilege of playing entire concerts with my dear friends Anani and Rose-ann in the audience, if not in the front row.

Anani leaves us with gifts of friendship, wonderment, and the love of lifelong learning. Please keep the stories coming. Anani did not talk about himself, and we will always wish to know him better.

Lisa Spraragen

I met Anani through my mother, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, who traveled with him, Maria Ines Lacey, and Warren Witte to Brazil in 1980. As representatives of the American Friends Service Committee, the four were charged with reporting on the state of labor, student, and religious organizing for democracy in the context of the military dictatorship. My mother’s travels awakened an interest in Brazil for me and when I arrived at Brown as a transfer student in spring 1983, one of the first classes I took was Anani’s “Blacks in Latin American Society and Politics.”

Anani encouraged me to study Portuguese and to participate, in 1985, in the inaugural Brown-in-Brazil study abroad program in Salvador, Bahia. It is not an understatement to say that the semester in Brazil was life-changing for me. For the last thirty years, I have been studying, teaching and researching Afro-Atlantic religious and cultural history. Anani’s influence set me firmly on the path of diaspora studies. His networks undergirded my experience in Brazil in important ways. Through Anani, directly or indirectly, I met many of the scholars, artists, community activists and religious leaders who have impacted my life and work as a transnational scholar – including Lelia Gonzales, Luiza Bairros, Isabel Cristina Ferreira dos Reis and Iyalorixá Valnizia Pereira. Through the years, Anani remained a dear friend and mentor. He invited me back to Brown to lecture to his students and he traveled all the way to Denver for my mother’s memorial service in 2004, and later sent me a CD of Aretha Franklin’s Gospel album to help lift my spirits as I grieved.

Anani was such a warm, brilliant and engaging person. He was deeply committed to cultivating relationships as part and parcel of his work as a teacher and scholar. I am so grateful to have been his student. I offer my deepest condolences to his wife, Rose Ann, and to the other members of his extended family as they mourn his loss. We are all much improved by Anani’s passage through this world. May his memory remain with us as a guide and a blessing.

Rachel Harding

If I had to choose one word, and one word only to describe Anani, that word would be elegant. Actually, I would need two words: extraordinarily elegant.

Upon sight, Anani immediately projected elegance, whether in a traditional Ghanaian shirt or a classic suit and tie or his university gown. His handsome face was an exemplar of elegance with intelligent eyes daring you not to be drawn into conversation and his beguiling smile inviting you to say more, to reveal more, to think more.

Anani was elegant in everything he did: lecturing, moderating a conference, reading a newspaper, shopping, or plucking a thin volume from a rickety retaining wall of books. He was elegant cooking groundnut chicken, and speaking of cooking, here was a man who could, with only a few spices, make something unforgettably delicious and delectable out of anything- sawdust, twine, anything- you name it. Anani was elegant bundled up and trundling home along Thayer Street in a blizzard, or as a survivor of Bahia’s notorious humidity, coolly quaffing a frigid Haffenreffer as others panted in what they perceived to be a heatwave, as he recalled, perhaps, his favorite Top Five great moments in the history of The Greatest Game.

There was the impish elegance, when, and with no small vindication, he finally was able to place a big fat red X on the last of the faces on his renowned African strongman poster on his office wall in Churchill House.

The elegance of Anani’s intellect and prodigious scholarship was even more elegant than his external elegance, and to experience his teaching was a marvel to behold. He had an elegant voice with a wonderful lilt, and his laugh, well, maybe not elegant, sure made you feel good if not laugh along. And his views and opinions were always eloquently and elegantly expressed as he talked about the history and politics of favelas and fazendas and demon rum and rebellions and slave ships.

But the most exquisitely elegant thing about Anani was his friendship, and if you were blessed and lucky, a long and enduring one to be remembered forever.

Saravá, Anani.

Josh Elbaum

Decades prior to higher education recognizing the value of an Ethnic Studies Department, I was a student at Brown University seeking such, but not finding it. I knew that I wanted to be a journalist and follow in the footsteps of the late Brown alum, Ron Hutson. I knew Ron because he lived in my Roxbury, Boston neighborhood, graduated from Brown with a Political Science major, wrote for the Boston Globe, and had won a Pulitzer for writing articles about school segregation that ended up motivating the City of Boston to desegregate the Boston Public School system.

When Ron was at Brown, nothing offered academically really helped him prepare for the world of journalism. He did it on his own. I did not have to do it on my own because I had Anani. Under his guidance, I majored in Latin American Studies, an independent major. His vast knowledge of that subject and the degree he arranged for me helped me when I graduated from Brown and applied for a job as a journalist in Southern California where many people with Mexican and Latin American backgrounds live and work.

The world needs more professors like Anani who will provide the knowledge and courses to help fulfill students' dreams instead of forcing them into departmental boxes meant to justify the employment of professors. In recent years, I've taught full time as a university professor. I hope to teach journalism and writing for TV and Film at Brown. I know there is no department that provides that, but Brown students track me down all the time for advice and help in that field. I'm sure that many of Anani's former students feel the same need to do for others what he did for us...provide a pathway guiding us to our dreams.

Missing you.

Skye Knight Dent

Dearest Anani,

I wish you could see and hear the wonderful tributes and memories that people have been sharing from around the world to celebrate and honor your amazing life.

It is remarkable, but not surprising, that people have extolled your kindness, charm, humor, warmth and humanity at least as much as people have praised your scholarship, teaching, academic achievements and wisdom.

Thank you for being a great teacher in the academic classroom and in the classroom of life. I feel fortunate that I took two classes with you and that you advised me on my honors thesis in international relations, which I wrote about the impact of British law on traditional systems of administering justice in the Gold Coast and Kenya. I still often think of lessons I learned from you about race, perception, bias, language and human beings as well as the interdisciplinary nature of academics and life. I am also deeply grateful I had the opportunity to develop a friendship with you and Rose-Ann, and I was so happy you both attended my wedding to Alison.

I will treasure so many wonderful memories, including meeting two of your brothers, one visiting from Ghana and the other from Washington, D.C., all three together for the first time in many years, your surprising me by inviting my brother, a Brown student, to join us for dinner once, great conversations over Korean food in New York City, Japanese food in São Paolo, ground nut stew in Providence, enjoying your hearty laugh and hearing you call me Grossmint, a nickname from the days when I often ate and gave out mints. As in, “Oh, Grossmint, I read 16 newspapers before lunch today.”

I have very fond memories of the last time I saw you, about three years ago when I attended my reunion with Alison and my stepdaughter, Zoë. We visited you in your office, which my fellow alum Ben Moser aptly described as an artist’s studio in a great piece he posted on this virtual memory wall. From the moment we walked in, you enthusiastically greeted us and launched right into telling Zoë the story of when we first met at your office hours many years before Zoë was even born, including teasing me about what I was wearing and my shy demeanor back then. And you asked her thoughtful questions about her plans and our visit to RISD.

Anani, thank you for being a wonderful teacher, friend and mensch and for enriching the Brown community and the world.

With gratitude, peace and love,

Amy Grossberg ‘88