Mourning literary genius Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Awoonor (13 March 1935—21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict Africa during decolonisation. He started writing under the name George Awoonor Williams.

Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in the September 2013 attack at Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.

Awoonor was born in Ghana when it was still called the Gold Coast. He was educated at Achimota School and then proceeded to the University of Ghana. He taught African literature at the University of Ghana.

While at the University of Ghana he wrote his first poetry book, Rediscovery, published in 1964. Like the rest of his work, Rediscovery is based on African oral poetry. In Ghana, he managed the Ghana Film Corporation and founded the Ghana Play House.

His early works were inspired by the singing and verse of his native Ewe people.

He then studied literature at the University of London, and while in England he wrote several radio plays for the BBC. He spent the early 1970s in the United States, studying and teaching at Stony Brook University (then called Suny at Stony Brook).

While in the USA he wrote This Earth, My Brother, and My Blood. Awoonor returned to Ghana in 1975 as head of the English department at the University of Cape Coast.

Within months he was arrested for helping a soldier accused of trying to overthrow the military government and was imprisoned without trial and was later released. The house by the Sea is about his time in jail. After imprisonment Awoonor became politically active and has written mostly nonfiction.

Awoonor was Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil from 1984 to 1988, before serving as his country’s ambassador to Cuba.

From 1990 to 1994 Awoonor was Ghana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where he headed the committee against apartheid. He was also a former Chairman of the Council of State.

Death

On 21 September 2013, Awoonor was among those killed in an attack at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. He was in Kenya as a participant in the Storymoja Hay Festival, a four-day celebration of writing, thinking and storytelling at which he was due to perform on the evening of his death.

The Ghanaian government confirmed his death the next day. His son was also shot, but was later discharged from hospital.

Awoonor’s remains were flown from Nairobi to Accra, Ghana on 25 September 2013 for burial.

Works

Poetry

• Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964)

• Night of My Blood (1971) – poems that explore Awoonor’s roots, and the impact of foreign rule in Africa

• The House By the Sea (1978)

• The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems (to be published in 2014

Novels

• This Earth, My Brother (1971) – a cross between a novel and a poem

• Comes the Voyager at Last (1992)

Non-fiction

• The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975) Anchor Press, ISBN 0-385-07053-5

• Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990)