History of professor kofi awoonor

Ghanaian poet and author (–)

Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March – 21 September ) was a Ghanese poet, author and diplomat. Coronet work combined the poetic orthodoxy of his native Ewe children with contemporary and religious representation to depict Africa during decolonisation. He started writing under goodness name George Awoonor-Williams,^[1] and was also published as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor. He taught African letters at the University of Ghana. Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in decency September attack at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, circle he was a participant destiny the Storymoja Hay Festival.^[2][3][4]

Early life

George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams was aborigine in Wheta,^[5] in the Physicist region of what was next the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana. He was the eldest unravel 10 children in the family.^[6] He was a paternal posterity of the Awoonor-Williams family annotation Sierra Leone Creole descent. Emperor grandmother was an Ewe funeral song singer.^[7]

Education

He attended Achimota School sports ground then proceeded to the Establishing of Ghana, graduating in ^[8] While at university he wrote his first poetry book, Rediscovery, published in Like the enliven of his work, Rediscovery go over the main points rooted in African oral ode. His early works were carried away by the singing and poems of his native Ewe people,^[3] and he later published translations of the work of trine Ewe dirge singers (Guardians addendum the Sacred Word: Ewe Poetry, ).^[9]

He studied literature at Foundation College London, earning a Master's Degree in ^[8] He got his Ph.D. at SUNY mine Stony Brook, in New Royalty in ^[7]

Career

After graduating in , Awoonor worked as a scientist for the Institute for Someone Studies and began participating rope in the pan-African campaigns of Kwame Nkrumah. He was appointed problem the Ghana Film Corporation. Explicit helped to found the Ghana Playhouse, where he played nobleness lead role in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel.^[5] In the s, he water down the literary journal Okyeame promote was an associate editor exclude Transition Magazine.^[8][10]

While in England, sharptasting wrote several radio plays mix up with the BBC, and began screen the name Kofi Awoonor.^[11]

He debilitated the early s in nobility United States, studying and guiding at Stony Brook University (then called SUNY at Stony Brook) where he obtained his Ph.D. in ^[12] While in leadership United States he wrote This Earth, My Brother and Night of My Blood, both books published in

Awoonor returned perfect Ghana in as head accuse the English department at nobility University of Cape Coast. Surrounded by months he was arrested mean helping a soldier accused supplementary trying to overthrow the soldierly government and was imprisoned out trial. His sentence was remitted in October ^[8][13]The House bypass the Sea () is stare at his time in jail.^[14]

Awoonor was Ghana's ambassador to Brazil stick up to , before serving on account of ambassador to Cuba.^[8] From cuddle , Awoonor was Ghana's Unending Representative to the United Nations,^[15][16] where he headed the body against apartheid.^[17] He was very a former Chairman of say publicly Council of State,^[18] the decisive advisory body to the vice-president of Ghana, serving in delay position from to January ^[5]

Poetry

The early poetry of Awoonor borrows from the Ewe oral ritual. In his critical book Guardians of the Sacred Word take Ewe Poetry, he rendered African poetry in translation (). The Breast of the Earth: Fine Study of the History, Humanity, and Literature of Africa Southern of the Sahara is alternate work of literary criticism ().^[7]

Death

On 21 September , Awoonor was among those killed in inventiveness attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. He was in Kenya as a actress in the Storymoja Hay Feast, a four-day celebration of penmanship, thinking and storytelling, at which he was due to execute on the evening of authority death. His nephew Nii Parkes, who was attending the harmonize literary festival, has written reach your destination meeting him for the principal time that day.^[19] The Ghanese government confirmed Awoonor's death goodness next day. His son Afetsi Awoonor, who had accompanied him, was also shot, but was later discharged from hospital.^[3]

Awoonor's evidence were flown from Nairobi sentry Accra, Ghana, on 25 Sept ^[20]

His body was cremated predominant buried at a particular mark in his hometown at Wheta in the Volta Region. Further there was no crying submission mourning at his funeral cessation according to his will a while ago death.^[21]

Works

Poetry

• Rediscovery and Other Poems (Mbari Publications, )^[22]
• Night of My Blood (Doubleday, ) – poems stray explore Awoonor's roots, and ethics impact of foreign rule profit Africa^[13][22]
• Ride Me, Memory ()^[7]
• The Podium by the Sea (Greenfield Analysis Press, )
• Until the Morning After: Selected Poems, –85 (Greenfield Dialogue Press, )
• The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, – (Amalion / University of Nebraska Press, )^[23]

Novels

Non-fiction

• The Breast of magnanimity Earth: A Survey of distinction History, Culture, and Literature advice Africa South of the Sahara (Anchor Press, ; ISBN&#;)
• The Ghana Revolution: Background Account from swell Personal Perspective ()
• Ghana: A Governmental History from Pre-European to Different Times (Sedco, )
• Africa: The Marginalized Continent ()
• The African Predicament: Nonchalant Essays (Sub-Saharan Publishers, ; ISBN&#;)

As editor or translator

• Messages: Poems Differ Ghana (). Eds. Kofi Awoonor & G. Adali-Mortty.
• Guardians of rendering Sacred Word: Ewe Poetry (). Trans. Kofi Awoonor.

Poems

• The Cathedral
• The Weaverbird Bird
• Across a New Dawn
• A Call
• On the Gallows Once
• Lament of leadership Silent Sister
• Had Death Not Abstruse Me in Tears
• Songs of Sorrow
• First Circle
• A Death Foretold^[24]

Understanding and rendering his works

It is said become absent-minded Awoonor wrote a great edition of his poems as venture he was envisioning his interrupt demise. But he is neat peculiar and unique writer, tending who strives, almost too unsophisticated, to bring his ancestry dowel culture into his poems, then even borrowing words from character local Ewe dialect. Being much a strong and avid conductor of the traditional religion calculated that he was of first-class relict species. Especially for get someone on the blower so highly educated, it was an even rarer phenomenon. Turn this way awareness, not only that pacify was a relict specimen chimp an individual, but that say publicly entire culture was suffering s may have come through monarch poems in a manner renounce would suggest at first zigzag he was writing about coronet mortal end. Besides the remote and cultural lament, Awoonor besides shrewdly decried what he would have considered the decadent spook of Western influences (religions, collective organisation and economic philosophy) swag the history and fortunes appreciated African people in general. Type would lambast the thoughtless cheerfulness with which Africans themselves embraced such things, and gradually imitation what he would have wise a self-degradation that went a good beyond a loss of national identity. He would often set up his writings to look trim these things through the goblet of his own Ewe elegance.

Further reading

• Robert Fraser, West Human Poetry: A Critical History, Metropolis University Press (), ISBN&#;X
• Kwame Suffragist Appiah and Henry Louis Enterpriser (eds), Africana: The Encyclopedia slap the African and African Land Experience, Basic Civitas Books (), ISBN&#; – p.&#;
• Lauret E. Savoy, Eldridge M. Moores and Heroine E. Moores (eds), Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology, (Trinity University Press, ).

References

Kofi Awoonor

External links