A Review of Patrick Asare’s “The Boy from Boadua: One African’s Journey of Hunger and Sacrifice in Pursuit of a Dream”

By Nana Dadzie Ghansah

According to the Library of Congress Compilation titled “Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations,” published in 2010, the saying, “The show’s not over till the fat lady sings,” was coined in 1978 by Dan Cook, a sportswriter from San Antonio, Texas.
That year, the San Antonio Spurs were playing the Washington Bullets (now the Wizards) in the NBA playoffs. The Spurs won the first game in the series. He coined the phrase to remind his hometown team not to get complacent after that win. The Spurs would lose the series.

This origin story of the saying is one of many out there. Some attribute it to Wagner’s opera “The Ring of the Nibelung” (Der Ring des Nibelungen). The piece is closed off by the rather plump Valkyrie, Brünnhilde, singing a 20-minute aria. There is also the attribution to steamboats. The steamboat’s boiler was called “the fat lady,” and it whistled when it built up enough steam. The sailors called that “the fat lady singing,” which always marked the end of their shore leave.

No matter who coined that phrase, it came to mind as I read the riveting memoir of a fellow Ghanaian-American, Patrick Asare, titled “The Boy from Boadua…