#ReadGhanaian🇬🇭 mini book/author collage + LIT links

Once again, the month of March is here! Ghana gained independence in March (TODAY, March 6th 1957), so I like to dedicate this month to celebrating Ghanaian excellence! As a reader of Ghanaian heritage, I enjoy discovering new Ghanaian writers and learning about our pioneer writers. If we don’t celebrate our own, who will?

The #ReadGhanaian🇬🇭 book challenge is well underway and it’s great to see lots of folks participating in the challenge of reading at least 5 books by writers of Ghanaian descent! Below is a mini collage showing a snippet of some of the Ghanaian books and writers highlighted two years ago in the GH at 60 | Our Writers & Their Books series ~

GH at 60 | Our Writers & Their Books part 1

GH at 60 | Our Writers & Their Books part 2

GH at 60 | Our Writers & Their Books part 3

While the 3-part series is not exhaustive by any means, it highlights over 80 Ghanaian writers & their books! With the plethora of Ghanaian writers and books highlighted in the series, there is no excuse if anyone claims they don’t know (m)any writers from Ghana!

 

Check out: #ReadGhanaian🇬🇭: KidLit Edition

by Edem Torkornoo, founder of Booksie.

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Below are lit(erature) links I’ve been enjoying lately. These are links to some great short stories, poems and articles on the interwebs, showcasing Ghanaian EXCELLENCE:

• How I Learned to Do My Own Braids — And How It Liberated Me by Alisha Acquaye (via Teen Vogue)

I was stuck in a position where I had to learn.

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• A Rainy Morning in Accra by Hakeem Adam (via Flash Fiction Ghana)

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• My Name Is Not Cool Anymore by Mohammed Nasheehu Ali (via The New York Times)

How I came to possess the name of the boxer who was once the most famous and baddest man on the planet happened by accident.

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• Multiply by Kobby Ankomah-Graham (via Kobby Ankomah-Graham’s website)

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• Slow-Cooking History by Ayesha Harruna Attah (via The New York Times)

  I add the leaf of the cocoyam plant to dried mudfish, mushrooms and snails, and think of my indomitable ancestors.

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• Black Sky by Maame Blue (via AFREADA)

[This story was published as the winner of the 2018  AFREADA x Africa Writes Competition. + Maame Blue is one of the 20 Black British writers who will have work published by Jacaranda Books in 2020!]

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• Stank with Sweat by Nana Nyarko Boateng (via Kinna Reads)

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• My Secondhand Lonely by Zoë Gadegbeku (via Longreads)

Raised by a single, independent mother, one young woman struggles with her familial inheritance and the relationship between self-sufficiency and social isolation.

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• The Forgotten Kingdom by Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed (via Africa is a Country)

The links between knowing history, media and political agency in northern Ghana.

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• Visceral Valuation: On Realizing That I’m Wearing a Black Body by Nana Prempeh (via Anastamos, Chapman University)