Ayi Kwei Armah | |
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| Born | (1939-10-28)28 October 1939 (age 85) 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 aGhanaian writer best known for his novels includingThe Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968),Two Thousand Seasons (1973) andThe Healers (1978). He is also an essayist, as well as having written poetry, short stories, and books forchildren.[1]
Ayi Kwei Armah was born in the port city ofSekondi-Takoradi inGhana toFante-speaking parents, descending on his father's side from a royal family in theGa nation.[2] From 1953 to 1958, Armah attended Prince of Wales College (now known asAchimota School), and won a scholarship to study in the United States, where he was between 1959 and 1963.[3] He attendedGroton School inGroton,MA, and thenHarvard University, where he received a degree insociology. He then moved toAlgeria and worked as a translator for the magazineRévolution Africaine. In 1964, he returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter forGhana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo Secondary School.[citation needed]
Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor ofJeune Afrique magazine inParis. From 1968 to 1970, Armah studied atColumbia University, obtaining hisMFA increative writing. His work in New York "on his second" novel and other writings was supported by "a grant" theFarfield Foundation, a CIA front that supported many African artists and writers.[4] In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher inEast Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe,Tanzania, and at theNational University of Lesotho. He subsequently taught at theUniversity of Massachusetts inAmherst,Cornell University, and at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison. He has lived inDakar,Senegal, since the 1980s.
In the village ofPopenguine, 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 magazineOkyeame, and inHarper's Magazine,The Atlantic Monthly, andNew 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.
InFragments (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 aPortuguese 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 Africanslave trades are the subject of Armah'sTwo Thousand Seasons (1973), in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through thehistory of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years.Arab andEuropean 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 theAshanti 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 publishedOsiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group that reinstatesancient Egypt at the centre of its curriculum.
Belonging to the generation ofAfrican writers afterChinua Achebe andWole 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. WhileTwo 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 apan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has advocated for the adoption ofKiswahili as the Africa's continental language.
Novels
For children
Non-fiction
