Armah, Ayi Kwei

About Ayi Kwei Armah

Biography (Encyclopædia Britannica)

Biography (jrank.org)

Reviews

Achebe, Chinua. "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born." New African, vol. 487, 2009

Adesokan, Akin. "Seed Time." Research in African Literatures, vol. 39, no. 2, 2008

McKoy, Sheila Smith. "A Griot's Song." Obsidian, vol. 8, no. 2, 2007

Adams, Anne V. "Ayi Kwei Armah, Radical Iconoclast." International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 35, no. 5, 2002

Perrin, Andrew J. "What is African?" Callaloo, vol. 22, no. 1, 1999

Lorentzon, Leif. "Ayi Kwei Armah's Africa: The Sources of His Fiction." Research in African Literatures, vol. 21, no. 2, 1990

Gaffney, James. "Why are We so Blest?" America, vol. 126, no. 16, 1972

Tucker, Martin. "Tragedy of a Been-to." New Republic, vol. 162, no. 5, 1970

Cargas, Harry J. "Fragments." America, vol. 122, no. 9, 1970

Adams, Phoebe. "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born." Atlantic, vol. 222, no. 4, 1968.

Interviews

Balogun, F. Odun. "Ayi Kwei Armah: Radical Iconoclast: Pitting Imaginary Worlds Against the Actual." Research in African Literatures, vol. 34, no. 3, 2003

Criticism

Mangwanda, Marcel Khombe. "Lexical Structure as a Marker of Ideology in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments and Two Thousand Seasons." English Academy Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2019

Lazarus, Neil. "The Novel and Consciousness of Labour." The Cambridge Companion to World Literature, Etherington and Zimbler (eds.), 2018

Ney, Stephen. "Teleology and Secular Time in Armah and Ngũgĩ: Augustine, Manicheanism, and the African Novel." Research in African Literatures, vol. 48, no. 2, 2017

Sackey, Edward. "Ayi Kwei Armah's The Resolutionaries: Exoteric Fiction, the Common Poeple & Social Change in Post-Colonial Africa - A Critical Review." Politics and Social Justice, Emenyonu (ed.), 2014

Ryan, Connor. "Regimes of Waste: Aesthetics, Politics, and Waste from Kofi Awoonor and Ayi Kwei Armah to Chimamanda Adichie and Zeze Gamboa." Research in African Literatures, vol. 44, no. 4, 2013

Samiselo, George. "Reading the Rhetor in Postcolonial African Fiction: Armah's Two Thousand Seasons as an Illustration." Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2013

Andrade, Susan. "Realism, Reception, 1968, and West Africa." Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 3, 2012

Barthet, Stella Borg. "The Politics of Myth in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments." Engaging with Literature of Commitment, Volume 1: Africa in the World, Collier et al. (eds.), 2012

Ogede, Ode S. "Ayi Kwei Armah's Professional Correspondence: Unveiling the Ordeals of a Gifted African Author." Matatu, vol. 40, no. 1, 2012

Akhuemokhan, Sophie. "The Ankh & Maat: Symbols of Successful Revolution in Ayi Kwei Armah's Osiris Rising." New Novels in African Literature Today, Emenyonu (ed.), 2010

MacKenzie, Clayton G. "Hope and Purification in the Writings of Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo." Orbis Litterarum, vol. 65, no. 2, 2010

Osei-Nyame, Kwadwo Jr. "The Politics of 'Translation' in African Postcolonial Literature: Olaudah Equiano, Ayi Kwei Armah, Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Tayeb Salih and Leila Aboulela." Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2009

Bamiro, Edmund O. "Sociolinguistic Consequences of Language Shift in Anglophone West African Literature." Sociolinguistic Studies, vol. 3, no. 3, 2009

Akhuemokhan, Sophie. "Distributive Justice and the Blind Continent: A Study of Cross of Gold by Lauretta Ngcobo and Osiris Rising by Ayi Kwei Armah." ARIEL, vol. 39, no. 4, 2008

Lebdai, Benaouda. "Armah's Obsessions with the 'Middle Passage': Reality and Symbols." Africa and Trans-Atlantic Memories: Literary and Aesthetic Manifestations of Diaspora and History, Opoku-Agyemang et al. (eds.), 2008

Mutia, Babila. "Meaning in Character: Armah's Teacher in The Beatyful Ones Revisted." Words and Worlds: African Writing, Theater, and Society, Arndt and Berndt (eds.), 2007

Ayivor, Kwame. "'The Charlatanism That Was Out Education': Armah's Visionary Reconstruction of Pan-Africanist History in KMT". English in Africa, vol. 32, no. 2, 2005

Ayivor, Kwame. "'The Beautyful Ones Were Born and Murdered': Armah's Visionary Reconstruction of African History and the Pan-Africanist Dream in Osiris Rising." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 38, no. 3, 2003

Nazareth, Peter. "The Beautyful Ones Take a Walk in the Night." African Writers and Their Readers, Falola and Harlow (eds.), 2002

Spencer, Robert. "'This Zone Occult Instability': The Utopian Promise of the African Novel in the Era of Decolonisation." New Formations, vol. 47, 2002

Morrison, Kathleen. "Regenerative Archetypes: Social Criticism through Water-Goddess Myths in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments and Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah." Commonwealth Novel in English, vol. 9, no. 10, 2001

Wright, Derek. "Developing Agenca: The Later Stories of Ayi Kwei Armah." Telling Stories: Postcolonial Short Fiction in English, Bardolph (ed.), 2001

Ayivor, Kwame. "The Golden Image of the Akan Negated: A Reading of Asi Kwei Armah's The Healers." English in Africa, vol. 27, no. 2, 2000

Akyeampong, Emmanuel. "Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born." African Novels in the Classroom, Hey (ed.), 2000

Mazrui, Alamin M. "Socialist-Oriented Literature in Postcolonial Africa: Retrospective and Prospective." African Visions: Literary Images, Political Change, and Social Struggle in Contemporary Africa, Mwaria et al. (eds.), 2000

Wilson-Tagoe, Nana. "Narrative, History, Novel: Intertexuality in the Historical Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and Yvonne Vera." Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 1999

Innes, C. L. "Conspicuous Consumption: Corruption and the Body Politic in the Writing of Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo." Essays on African Writing 2: Contemporary Literature, Gurnah (ed.), 1995

Ezeigbo, Theodora. "The Dynamics of African Womanhood in Ayi Kwei Armah's Novels". Feminism in African Literature, Chukwuma (ed.), 1994

Wright, Derek. "Breaking the Cycle: Fanonian Patterns in West African Writing." Literary Half-Yearly, vol. 35, no. 1, 1994

Ogede, Ode S. "Oral Echoes in Armah's Short Stories." Orature in African Literature Today, Jones et al. (eds.), 1992

Wright, Derek (ed.). Critical Perspectives on Ayi Kwei Armah, 1992

Lazarus, Neil. Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction, 1990

Wright, Derek. Ayi Kwei Armah's Africa: The Sources of His Fiction, 1989

Lipenga, Ken. "Malignant Readings: The Case of Armah's Critics." Journal of Humanities, vol. 1, no. 1-19, 1987

"Special Issue on Ayi Kwei Armah." Research in African Literatures, vol. 18, no. 2, 1987

Petersen, Kirsten Holst. "West African Politics and Politicians from a Literary Point of View." The History and Historiography of Commonwealth Literature, Riemenschneider (ed.), 1983

Palmer, Eustace. "Negritude Rediscovered: A Reading of the Recent Novels of Armah, Ngugi, and Soyinka." International Fiction Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 1981

Goldie, Terry. "A Connection of Images: The Structure of Symbols in The Beautyful Ones Are not Yet Born". Kunapipi, vol. 1, no. 1, 1979

Izevbaye, D. S. "Ayi Kwei Armah and the 'I' of the Beholder." A Celebration of Black and African Writing, King and Ogungbesan (eds.), 1975

Larson, Charles R. "Ayi Kwei Armah's Vision of African Reciprocity." Africa Today, vol. 21, no. 2, 1974

Mphahlele, Ezekiel. "The New Mood in African Literature." Africa Today, vol. 19, no. 4, 1972

Palmer, Eustace. An Introduction to the African Novel: A Critical Study of Twelve Books by Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi, Camara Laye, Elechi Amadi, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mongo Beti and Gabriel Okara, 1972

Works

Autobiography/LifeWriting

The Eloquence of the Scribes: A Memoir on the Sources and Resources of African Literature (2006)

Novels

The Resolutionaries (2013)

KMT: the House of Life (2002)

Osiris Rising (1995)

The Healers (1975)

Two Thousands Seasons (1973)

Why Are We so Blest? (1972)

Fragments (1970)

The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)

Children's and Young Adult's Book

Hieroglyphics for Babies (2002)

Essays/Articles/Non-Fiction/Short Stories

"Masks and Marx: The Marxist Ethos vis-à-vis African Revolutionary Theory and Praxis." African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, Olaniyan and Quayson (eds.), 2007

"Africa and the Francophone Dream." West Africa, 26 Aug. 1985

"One Writer's Education." West Africa, 29 Apr. 1985

"Our Language Problem." West Africa, 29 Apr. 1985

"The Lazy School of Literary Criticism." West Africa, 25 Feb. 1985

"The Oxygen of Translation." West Africa, 11 Feb. 1985

"Larsony or Fiction as Criticism of Fiction." Asemka, vol. 4, 1976

"Chaka". Black World, vol. 24, no. 4, 1975

"The Definitive Chaka". Transition: An International Review, vol. 50, 1975-1976

"Sundiata, an Epic of Old Mali". Black World, vol. 23, no. 7, 1974

Audio and Audiovisual Material

A Global Conversation: Ayi Kwei Armah and John Silvanus Wilson. YouTube, 22 Mar. 2016