Continuing in my efforts to offset the recent preponderance of African-American voices in this column, I follow up last month's feature on a Zambian gentleman by directing Black Eye's focus to Reina, a British woman who has come to Japan in pursuit of her dream.
While many set goals for themselves where the path to success has at least been paved, this industrious young woman has ventured into completely uncharted territory for a foreign-born female of African descent in Japan. Setting out to be a Japanese voice actress (seiyū), she has arrived at a destination she had not foreseen, a place where outside voices are rarely heard.
As a teen coming of age in the U.K., Adelaide Amissah (Reina is her stage name) hatched a plan. She was the first British-born child of Ghanaian parents who'd immigrated to England in the early 1980s. They'd set down roots in northwest London, in a notably deprived neighborhood called Harlesden.