Ayi Kwei Armah | |
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| Born | 28 October 1939 Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Citizenship | Ghanaian |
| Education | Prince of Wales College |
| Alma mater | Columbia University, Harvard University, |
| Notable works |
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Ayi Kwei Armah (born 28 October 1939) is a Ghanaian writer best known for his novels including The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Two Thousand Seasons (1973) and The Healers (1978). He is also an essayist, as well as having written poetry, short stories, and books for children. [1]
Ayi Kwei Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana to Fante-speaking parents, descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation. [2] From 1953 to 1958, Armah attended Prince of Wales College (now known as Achimota School), and won a scholarship to study in the United States, where he was between 1959 and 1963. [3] He attended Groton School in Groton, MA, and then Harvard University, where he received a degree in sociology. He then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine Révolution Africaine. In 1964, he returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo Secondary School.[ citation needed ]
Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968 to 1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. His work in New York "on his second" novel and other writings was supported by "a grant" the Farfield Foundation, a CIA front that supported many African artists and writers. [4] In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He subsequently taught at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Cornell University, and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has lived in Dakar, Senegal, since the 1980s.
In the village of Popenguine, about 70 km from Dakar, he established his own publishing house, Per Ankh: the African Publication Collective, [5] through which his own books are now available. [6]
Beginning his career as a writer in the 1960s, Armah published poems and short stories in the Ghanaian magazine Okyeame , and in Harper's Magazine , The Atlantic Monthly , and New African. [7] His first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born , was published in 1968, and tells the story of a nameless man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana.
In Fragments (1970), the protagonist, Baako, is a "been-to" – a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western lifestyle. Baako's grandmother Naana, a blind-seer, stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfulfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure.
Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American university, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, Aimée Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. Aimée's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by OAS revolutionaries.
The trans-Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973), in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as "predators", "destroyers", and "zombies". The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age.
The Healers (1978) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the Ashanti Empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa.
Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995, when he published Osiris Rising , depicting a radical educational reform group that reinstates ancient Egypt at the centre of its curriculum.
Belonging to the generation of African writers after Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, Armah has been said to "epitomize an era of intense despair." [8] Armah's later work in particular has evoked strong reaction from many critics. While Two Thousand Seasons has been called dull and verbose, or the product of a "philosophy of paranoia, an anti-racist racism – in short, Negritude reborn" [9] Soyinka has written that Armah's vision "frees itself of borrowed philosophies in its search for unifying, harmonizing ideal for a distinctive humanity." [10]
As an essayist, Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the creation of a pan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.
Novels
For children
Non-fiction
The African Writers Series (AWS) is a collection of books written by African novelists, poets and politicians. Published by Heinemann, 359 books appeared in the series between 1962 and 2003.
African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings" from the 14th century AD. Another well-known book is the Garima Gospels, one of the oldest known surviving bibles in the world, written in Ge'ez around 500 AD.
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The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the debut novel by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah. It was published in 1968 by Houghton Mifflin, and then republished in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series in 1969. The novel tells the story of an unnamed man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana.
Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet from Uganda. She was awarded the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction, and earlier gained recognition for her poetry, particularly her first two collections, Men Love Chocolates But They Don't Say (2002) and The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami (2006).
Okyeame was a literary magazine founded by the Ghana Society of Writers in the post-Independence era, which saw the rapid rise of a new generation of thinkers, writers and poets in the country. The first issue of Okyeame appeared in 1960, and issues were published, at irregular intervals, up until 1972. Inspired by Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, the publication sought to explore the experiences of Africa from a new intellectual framework. Writers published in the magazine include its first editor Kofi Awoonor, Efua Sutherland, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo.
Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa Past, Present and Future is a novel written by Ayi Kwei Armah and published in 1995. The story revolves around an African-American woman, Ast, who goes to Africa looking for heritage after she gets her PhD. The text addresses a number of contemporary African issues, including the residual colonial institutions that limit African culture, the hypocritical nature of African Americans and expatriates who try to help Africa and the contemplation of "What is African history and culture?" The book is published by Per Ankh, a Senegalese publishing company.
Robert Fraser FRSL is a British author and biographer.
Benjamin Kwakye is a Ghanaian novelist and lawyer. His first novel, The Clothes of Nakedness, won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book, Africa, and has been adapted for radio as a BBC Play of the Week. His novel The Sun by Night won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa. His novel The Other Crucifix won the 2011 IPPY award. His is also the winner of the 2021 African Literature Association's Book of the Year Award for Creative Writing.
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The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is a jazz album by Branford Marsalis, leading a trio with Jeff "Tain" Watts and Robert Hurst and with guest appearances from Wynton Marsalis and Courtney Pine. It was recorded May 16–18, 1991, at CTS Studio A, Wembley, England, and June 24, 1991, at RCA Studio B in New York, New York. It peaked at number 3 on the Top Jazz Albums chart.
Two Thousand Seasons is a novel by Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah. The novel was first published in 1973 and subsequently published a number of times, including in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series. It is an epic historical novel, attempting to depict the last "two thousand seasons" of African history in one narrative arc following a Pan-African approach.
Kwei-Armah is a Ga surname, which means "to find the way". Notable people with the surname include:
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Popenguine-Ndayane is a small village on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Senegal, located 70 km south of Dakar, on the Petite Côte, in the department of M'Bour in the region of Thiès Region. Since 2008, it brings together two localities, Popenguine and Ndayane.
The Emergence of African Fiction is a 1972 academic monograph by American scholar Charles R. Larson. It was published initially by Indiana University Press, and again, in a slightly revised edition, in 1978 by Macmillan. Larson's study has elicited very different responses: it was praised as an early and important book in the study and appreciation of African literature in the West, but for others it remained stuck in a Eurocentric, even colonizing mode in which Western aesthetics were still the unspoken standard for artistic assessment.
The Healers is a novel by Ayi Kwei Armah. It was Armah's fifth novel which was published in 1979.
Ghanaian literature is literature produced by authors from Ghana or in the Ghanaian diaspora. It starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and became prominent with a post-colonial nationalist tradition in the mid-20th century. The current literary community continues with a diverse network of voices both within and outside the country, including in film, theatre, and modern digital formats such as blogging.
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