Kinna

Ghanaian Literature Week

Welcome to Ghanaian Literature Week!

This is a week long, from November 14, 2011 to November 20th, 2011, celebration of Ghanaian Literature and a discussion of book/reading related issues in Ghana.  Everyone is invited.  The rules of participation are simple:  read a literary work by a writer who is from or lives in Ghana, read a book about Ghana, discuss any issue related to reading and books in Ghana. For more detailed information, please see my introductory post, The 2nd Annual Ghanaian Literature Week.

I will add links below to participants’ reviews and discussions to this sticky post throughout the week.

The Twitter hashtag for the week is #GhanaLit

My sincere thanks to the participants!

38 comments

  9. Just thought of someone to add to your reading list …
    Author, YEMA LUCILDA HUNTER was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa and now lives in Ghana, West Africa. Her novels include, ROAD TO FREEDOM, BITTERSWEET and REDEMPTION SONG. Her new book is a biography, ” An African Treasure, in Search of Gladys Casely-Hayford, 1904 – 1950.”

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    • Thank you for coming by and leaving a comment. I’ve not heard of Yema Hunter. I will look for a new book. Gladys Casely-Hayford is fascinating.

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  13. I have been reading Nii Ayi Kwei Parkes Tail of the Blue Bird. I think he is very Ayi Kwei Armahian in his very arrestingly potent descriptive power and the uncanny knack for mining gems of wisdom from the seemingly mundane….

    check this…..” It sounded interesting, in the same way that sports highlights sounded so on the radio. But the listener is never there when the athletes, boxers,gymnasts, cricketers and footballers have to wake up at 4 a.m. to train, to run up the same hill a hundred times until the echo of the earth beneath their feet begins to haunt them(Parkes,2010:15).” And then Parkes also shows re-creative power with the word in stripping Akan and other Ghanaisms of their italicized vestments and allows their translations to borrow such livery: it is an African/ Ghana world alas!!!! That is a powerful statement of self awareness and ideational independence I have henceforth borrowed.

    I identify with the world he describes in Ghana because I grew up also in those years. Parkes captures both the wrenchingly brutal realities of that era and its very human magnificence….check this…..” Mr. Acquah’s thrift with the drink reminded Kayo of the first time he had had Pepsi. He was eleven and had just managed to get a scholarship to Presbyterian Boys Secondary School. His father brought the bottle home and they all had some-all of them: his mother, his father, his four-year-old sister and two-year-old brother, and himself(Parkes, 2010:23).” Parkes captures popular socio-economic history for us extending the path cut by Ayi Kwei Armah. Check this too…” Ah the ancestors knew what they talking about when they said Abusua yɛ dom….the family is indeed an army(Parkes, 2010:10).” Parkes intimates that the Abusua has kept us sane from the Washington Consensus to the Beijing Consensus. Parkes critiques our historical and cultural amnesia; he urges us to remember the Sankofa bird and to remember too that this reigning chaos is not normal at all. I am waiting for his sequel.

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  17. I’ve also read a short story by Yaba Badoe, which was in one of the books that Ama Ata Aidoo edited, African Love Stories. I might also read the story that Mel talked about yesterday (though I’m terrible at reading whole stories on-screen), and I still have a children’s book for later this week too. Am really enjoying other readers’ posts and they are definitely adding to my reading list!

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  19. I just posted on a short story by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, “Mallem Sile”-The story was short listed for the Caine prize in 2009. The author is from Ghana and the story is set in a market street tea shop.

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  20. I brought a whole stack of books with me on my trip (plus a few on my Kindle) and am excited to see what everyone else reviews this week as well! Thanks for hosting 🙂

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    • Looking forward to your reviews. I know that you have a hectic travel schedule so I’m all the more grateful for your participation.

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  21. Loved Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Eloquence of the Scribes(TES). I had read his hauntingly engaging Fragments few weeks earlier. TES is deep. For me Armah’s linkages of contemporary African literature as a corpus to works of the scribes of Egyptian civilization and the griots in feudal Africa completes a very useful circle and provides the needed continuity of the spoken and written word in African history. Daniel Defoe then NEVER invented the novel which fact has implications not just for literature in Africa but our approaches to other fields of knowledge as well. I like what PER ANKH his publishing house is doing in Senegal to ensure that African creatives benefit from their work. His description of Heinemann’s theft of his royalties on his books is shocking. TES also provides a useful window into how Armah first avoided and then came to terms with his calling as a writer.

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  24. I ordered a book (The Beutyful People Are Not Yet Born) from my library in plenty of time, but last week I got a message saying the book was no longer available. I ordered a copy from the Internet and hope it will get here soon. I will try and read/review it before the end of the week, but may end up being a couple of days late (depending on when it arrives and how long it is) I look forward to seeing what everyone else reads. Thanks for organising Ghanaian Literature Week!

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