Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Armah, Ayi Kwei (Vol. 136) - Samuel A. Dseagu （essay date 1998）

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Samuel A. Dseagu （essay date 1998）

SOURCE: “Ayi Kwei Armah,” in Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne, Greenwood Press, 1998, pp. 45-51.

[In the following essay, Dseagu provides an overview of Armah's career and major works.]

BIOGRAPHY

Ayi Kwei Armah was born in 1939 in Takoradi, then the only deep-sea harbor on the Gold Coast. He is descended on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga tribe inhabiting the environs of the present capital of Ghana. During the nineteenth century there arose a conflict within the royal family over succession to the royal stool as a result of which the ancestral family withdrew into exile to settle in Dahomey.

When the Takoradi harbor was built and the town became the hub of international trade on the Gold Coast, many people, including the father and relatives of Ayi Kwei Armah, moved there...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. S. Nyamfukudza （review date 7 March 1980）
   2. Kofi Owusu （essay date Spring 1988）
   3. Ahmed Saber （essay date 1989）
   4. Taban lo Liyong （essay date 1991）
   5. Derek Wright （essay date 1991）
   6. Edward Sackey （essay date Autumn 1991）
   7. Adewale Maja-Pearce （essay date 1993）
   8. Ode S. Ogede （essay date April 1993）
   9. B. M. Ibitokun （essay date Spring/Fall 1993）
   10. Leif Lorentzon （essay date 1994）
   11. K. Damodar Rao （essay date July 1994）
   12. Chinyere Nwahunanya （essay date 1995）
   13. Paul R. Petrie （essay date Summer 1997）
   14. Samuel A. Dseagu （essay date 1998）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. African Literature