Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013)

Reading this book of poetry in memory & honor of Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, who was killed this past week during the Nariobi mall attack. (The Washington Post obituary is here.)

Here is a PBS interview with his nephew (also a poet) in which his nephew reads one of Awoonor's most famous poems, The Weaver Bird.
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I finished Night of My Blood by Kofi Awoonor today. He is the Ghanaian poet who was killed recently in the Nairobi mall attack; his poetry is required reading in many of show more Ghana's high school literature classrooms. Parts of this collection were interesting & his poems cover many topics & issues related to old Ewe ways, colonialism, the struggle to emerge as an independent country, role of identity (new Africa vs. old Africa), etc.... Many thoughtful & moving pieces of poetry here, but I am sure that I am missing some of the depth just because it is from a different cultural tradition than mine. The few footnotes were interesting. One of them referred to a "ceremony of widowhood performed for any woman whose husband dies. It is an elaborate and at times painful ceremony, since tradition believes that the wife of a dead man bears some spiritual responsibility for her husband's death." I am not sure if Awoonor himself has left a wife behind, but this tradition sounds harrowing & hard on top of the reality of dealing with the death of a loved one, imo. Not the lightest of reads, but recommended if you are interested in African poetry. show less

Part of book project. You see, somebody has written a whole book on critical views of this book. You can tell it is important but I didn't like it at all. Please don't be surprised by a spoiler or 2. I couldn't really follow the narrative. The main character was a real jerk. I had trouble feeling sympathy. How could he treat his wife like that? And she had just come back from England, or did the narration wander even more than I thought it was doing? The stream of consciousness was hard to show more follow and it didn't work for me. The book didn't work for me. I should know more history. The ugliness has a purpose I know, the "earthiness" too -- how can I be as old & well-read as I am and still stop with an unpleasant feeling when a writer uses the words and images of bodily functions. But it did bother me and it put me off. I thought I would get into a story, with characters or a world I could care about, but I never did. show less