ANY of these descriptions – poet, author, academic, historian, diplomat – fits Kofi Awoonor who died 11 years ago, incidentally on 21 September, the United Nations International Peace Day. He was one of Africa’s foremost literary gifts to the world, though Ghanaians claim him. Of Ewe origins in Ghana, Wheta, Volta Region was his place of birth.
Awoonor was blown to death in 2013 at the upscale Westgate Shopping Mall terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya. He was 78 yet so active in his literary engagements. four Al-Shabaab terrorists executed the attack that left 71 dead, including chidren who were participating in an event in the mall and over 100 people were injured. The terrorists said that they were retaliating attacks on their bases in Somalia, two years earlier, by Kenya Defence Forces.
Awoonor, a former Ghanaian Permanent Representatives at the United Nations, had served as Ambassador to Brazil, and Cuba. My meeting with Awoonor was through literature where he had a huge presence in its various genres. Poetry appeared to be his forte. Was it?
His novel, ‘This Earth My Brother’, a cross between prose and verse, was popular enough that it was a sign off line among students after discussing the challenges of life.
Awoonor was in Kenya as a participant in the Storymoja Hay Festival, a four-day celebration of writing, thinking and storytelling. His performance was to be on the evening of his death.
His remains were flown from Nairobi to Accra four days after his passing. His cremated body was buried at a particular spot in his native Wheta.
Sobriety ruled the day. Awoonor had willed that there should be no crying or mourning at his funeral.
A man of peace was gone in the most brutal way on International Peace Day.
He left us his generous spirits in loads of literature. After reading the poem, Songs of Sorrow, one can’t stop muttering, This Earth, My Brother.
His Works: Poetry
Rediscovery and Other Poems (Mbari Publications, 1964); Night of My Blood (Doubleday, 1971); Ride Me, Memory (1973); The House by the Sea (Greenfield Review Press, 1978); Until the Morning After: Selected Poems, 1963–85 (Greenfield Review Press, 1987); The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964–2013 (Amalion / University of Nebraska Press, 2014)
Novels
This Earth, My Brother (Doubleday, 1971); Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (Africa World Press, 1992)
Non-fiction
The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (Anchor Press, 1975);
The Ghana Revolution: Background Account from a Personal Perspective (1984); Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (Sedco, 1990) Africa: The Marginalised Continent (1994) and The African Predicament: Collected Essays (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006)
As editor or translator
Messages: Poems From Ghana (1971). Eds. Kofi Awoonor & G. Adali-Mortty and Guardians of the Sacred Word: Ewe Poetry (1974). Trans. Kofi Awoonor
Poems
The Cathedral; The Weaver Bird; Across a New Dawn; A Call; On the Gallows Once; Lament of the Silent Sister; Had Death Not Had Me in Tears; Songs of Sorrow; First Circle and A Death Foretold
