Ayi Kwei Armah
Ghanaian Author
Born in 1939, and one of only a few Ghanaian novelists who have been published internationally since the 1960s, Ayi Kwei Armah is rather less known but is no less talented than his more widely feted Nigerian contemporaries. Variously based over the years in the United States, Algeria, Paris, Tanzania and Senegal, Armah has gathered a dedicated fan-base who might wish that his output had been somewhat greater than it has been. However, he has also worked as a translator, editor, scriptwriter and teacher. His novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born burst on to the scene in 1968, to be followed by others that display his extraordinary way with prose, at once excoriating and spiritual: Two Thousand Seasons (1973), Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa Past, Present and Future (1995) and The Healers (2000).
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Ayi Kwei Armah: "Awakening"
Ayi Kewi Armah: Awakening Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5
After reading Ayi Kewi Armah’s The Healers this summer I fell in love with the clarity of his thoughts. I highly recommend his writing. Set in 19th Century Ghana, The Healers is the story of a broken African society as a result of conflict between tribes and the invasion of Europeans and the pursuit of power. At the epicenter of the novel you have the concept of the manipulators and the healers which is essentially a battle between good and evil that spearheads the novel. The healers represent the African awakening which is what Ayi Kewi Armah is discussing in this presentation. In this discussion he channels the work of Cheikh Anta Diop expressing the need for a continental African identity and the need for Africans to use natural, material, intellectual and spiritual resources in order to achieve awakening and much more.
>via: http://fyeahafrica.tumblr.com/post/10695721461/blackacrylic-ayi-kewi-armah-aw...