Formation | 2000 |
---|---|
Founder | Ama Ata Aidoo |
Founded at | Accra, Ghana |
Type | Non-governmental |
Purpose | To support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output |
Headquarters | Accra, Ghana |
Website | mbaasem |
The Mbaasem Foundation is a foundation established by Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo in Accra, Ghana, in 2000. It is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to supporting and promoting the work of African women writers, [1] [2] to "establish and maintain a writing place for women". [3] In 2002 the rented headquarters of the foundation was "likened to the transformation of Ernest Hemingway's home in Chicago into a literary haven and museum". [4] The Foundation states its mission as being "To support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output", and as its goal: "To create an enabling environment for women to write, tell and publish their stories." [1]
In January 2000 Ama Ata Aidoo started an initiative called Mbaasem (meaning "women’s words, women’s affairs" in Akan) [5] based in Accra, Ghana, with the goal of building a women writers' centre and residency. [6] Subsequently incorporated as a registered non-governmental organization, the Mbaasem Foundation reflects the mission of its founder "to develop and support the sustainability of the work of African women writers who are usually sidelined in the industry". [7]
In 2012 Mbaasem launched a three-year project to develop a literacy manifesto to improve the literacy rate within Ghana. [8] Other activities include organizing the "Mbaasem Writing Contest for Girls", funded by the US Embassy of Ghana and The Royal Bank Ltd, with GHC 1000 as the top prize. [9] [10]
The Mbaasem Foundation has also been involved in international conferences for women writers. In 2013, it collaborated with the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA), New York University (NYU), and the Spanish Fundación Mujeres por África (Women for Africa Foundation) to present a major conference in Accra, Yari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue – An International Conference on Literature by Women of African Ancestry, held from 16 to 19 May. [5] Ghanaian writers and scholars including Ama Ata Aidoo, Amma Darko, Ruby Goka, Mamle Kabu, Esi Sutherland-Addy and Margaret Busby were invited to speak at the event, and among notable participants from other parts of the world who attended were Angela Davis of the USA, Tess Onwueme of Nigeria, Natalia Molebatsi of South Africa, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro of Puerto Rico, Véronique Tadjo of Côte d'Ivoire, and Évelyne Trouillot of Haiti. [5]
Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Jayne Cortez was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist. Her writing is part of the canon of the Black Arts Movement. She was married to jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman from 1954 to 1964, and their son is jazz drummer Denardo Coleman. In 1975, Cortez married painter, sculptor, and printmaker Melvin Edwards, and they lived in Dakar, Senegal, and New York City.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project. He writes for children under the name K.P. Kojo.
Wesley Girls' High School (WGHS) is an educational institution for girls in Cape Coast in the Central region of Ghana. It was founded in 1836 by Harriet Wrigley, the wife of a Methodist minister. The school is named after the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.
ICALEL is an acronym for the Calabar International Conference on African Literature and the English Language founded and chaired by African scholar and critic Ernest Emenyonu. At the centre of the conference are African writers and critics from all over the world. The first conference entitled “The Woman as a Writer in Africa” was held at the University of Calabar auditorium in May 1981 and Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo was keynote speaker. The themes of 1982, namely "Literature in African Languages" and "Writing Books for Children", featured Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Bessie Head as keynote speakers. The many notable African writers who have featured at the conference over the years include Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chinweizu, Dennis Brutus, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Elechi Amadi, Ken Saro Wiwa, Chukwuemeka Ike, Nuruddin Farah, Syl Cheney-Coker, to mention a few.
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan. As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.
Anowa is a play by Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo that was published in 1970, after Aidoo returned from Stanford University in California to teach at the University of Cape Coast. Anowa is based on a traditional Ghanaian tale of a daughter who rejects suitors proposed by her parents Osam and Badua, and marries a stranger who ultimately is revealed as the Devil in disguise. The play is set in the 1870s on the Gold Coast, and tells the story of the heroine Anowa's failed marriage to the slave trader Kofi Ako.
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo was a Kenyan professor, playwright, author, activist and poet. She was a literary critic and professor of Literature, Creative Writing and Research Methods in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in the United States, and later Zimbabwe. She taught Orature, Literature, and Creative Writing.
Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint is the debut novel of Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo, first published by Longman in 1977. It has been called "a witty, experimental work whose main point is a stylish dismissal of characteristic attitudes of both the white world and the black middle class." It was described by one reviewer as "a strikingly unusual and pertinent commentary on the African encounter with the West, on European soil.... Without being a conventional narrative or biography, it is a text that uses the framework of an account of a state-sponsored visit to Germany by a young Ghanaian woman to analyse what Europe is and does to those Africans whom it 'sponsors' and educates."
Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker, journalist and author.
Mabel Dove Danquah was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist, and creative writer, one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields. As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist." She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News. Entering politics in the 1950s before Ghana's independence, she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly. She created the awareness and the need for self-governance through her works.
Abena Pokua Adompim Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer and diplomat. She is a daughter of the former prime minister of Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia, and is the sister of actress Akosua Busia. Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University. She is Ghana's ambassador to Brazil, appointed in 2017, with accreditation to the other 12 republics of South America.
Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is a Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and public speaker, whose name at birth was Mildred Mary Nana-Ama Boakyewaa Brobby. She is best known for her 1998 memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression. Her short story "When a Man Loves a Woman" was shortlisted for the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.
The Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA) is an organization for women writers in Africa. Founded in 1991, the OWWA aims to promote the oral and written literature of African women, and address issues concerning publishing, censorship and human progress.
Esi Sutherland-Addy is a Ghanaian academic, writer, educationalist, and human rights activist. She is a professor at the Institute of African Studies, where she has been senior research fellow, head of the Language, Literature, and Drama Section, and associate director of the African Humanities Institute Program at the University of Ghana. She is credited with more than 60 publications in the areas of education policy, higher education, female education, literature, theatre and culture, and serves on numerous committees, boards and commissions locally and internationally. She is the first daughter of writer and cultural activist Efua Sutherland.
Rashidah Ismaili, also known as Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr, is a poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright who was born in Cotonou, Benin, West Africa, and in the 1950s migrated to the US, where she still lives in Harlem, New York City. She was part of the Black Arts Movement in New York in the 1960s. She is also an arts and culture critic and taught literature by French- and English-speaking African writers in higher education institutes for more than 30 years.
Nana Sandy Achampong is a Ghanaian media practitioner, novelist, poet and educator. He has worked in the fields of journalism, public relations, advertising, marketing, the visual arts and literature in Ghana, the United Kingdom and the United States. He is an author of books that cover the different genres of poetry, play, for children, fiction, non-fiction, Christian, media and anthology. He currently teaches at the African University College of Communications (AUCC), where he is also the Director of the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing.
Anis Haffar is a Ghanaian educationist, teacher, columnist and author. He is the founder of the GATE institute in Ghana, and is a council member of the Ghana Education Service. Also a notable journalist, he writes a weekly column for the Daily Graphic newspaper entitled "Education Matters with Anis Haffar", and the column "Leaders – Human Capital", in Business World (Ghana). Haffar was listed as one of the 100 most influential Africans of 2016 in Education by New African magazine.
Ivor Agyeman-Duah is a Ghanaian academic, economist, writer, editor and film director. He has worked in Ghana's diplomatic service and has served as an advisor on development policy.
The Dilemma of a Ghost is a play by Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo that was first performed in March 1964 for three nights at the Open Air Theatre of the University of Ghana, Legon, where the author was in her final year of studies, a few months away from graduating. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist. It was subsequently published in an edition with Aidoo's second play, Anowa (1970), both works dealing with the differences between Western culture and African traditions.