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Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities (African Humanities Series)
Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities by Kwesi Yankah is the first title in the newly established African Humanities Association (AHA) publication series.
By integrating his own biography into a critique of the global politics of knowledge production, Yankah, through a collection of essays, interrogates critical issues confronting the Humanities that spawn intellectual hegemonies and muffle African voices. Using the example of Ghana, he brings under scrutiny, amongst others, endemic issues of academic freedom, gender inequities, the unequal global academic order, and linguistic imperialism in language policies in governance.
In the face of these challenges, the author deftly navigates the complex terrain of indigenous knowledge and language in the context of democratic politics, demonstrating that agency can be liberatory when emphasising indigenous knowledge, especially expressed through the idiom of local languages and symbols, including Ananse, the protean spider, folk hero in Ghana and most parts of the pan-African world.
“Fascinating snapshots from an engaged scholarly life in Africa, valuable as an archival resource for the understanding of this period of higher education in Africa.” – John Higgins, Arderne Chair in Literature, Department of English Literary Studies, University of Cape Town
“This book is unique and gives a powerful rendition of the state of the Humanities in Africa (with Ghana as a case in point). It grapples with some of the pertinent issues dogging the Humanities in Africa. It comments on the Humanities scholarship in Africa, and subtly throws a challenge for future scholarship. It draws on African traditions, communal heritage, and governance in discussing the role and place of the Humanities in Africa. It also brings into the analysis the ever-changing imperatives and modernity in re-configuring African Humanities.” – Mark Benge Okot, Head of Department, Literature, Makerere University, Uganda
“Beyond the Political Spider’ effectively draws, in a unique fashion, from literature, history, linguistics and other cognate disciplines in the African Humanities.” – Sati Umaru Fwatshak, Department of History, University of Jos, Nigeria
₵340.00 -
To the Thirsty Land: Autobiography of a Patriot by Emmanuel Evans-Anfom
Emmanuel Evans-Anfom, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 101 years, was considered a living legend in Ghana.
He was one of the great pioneers of the medical profession in that country, as well as serving as Vice Chancellor for The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. His memoirs span his lifetime from the end of colonial rule through four and a half decades of independent Ghana. They tell the story of his early upbringing in James Town, the seminal impact of Achimota College on his education and career, and his medical training at Edinburgh University in wartime Britain. At the peak of his professional career, Evans-Anfom was one of the leading surgeons of the country and a renowned educationalist.
₵130.00 – ₵180.00To the Thirsty Land: Autobiography of a Patriot by Emmanuel Evans-Anfom
₵130.00 – ₵180.00 -
Booknook Leadership Pack: They Call Me Archie, The Bold New Normal, Broken for Use (3 Exceptional Ghanaian Leaders)0
Get these 3 books by three amazing Ghanaian leaders and enjoy free shipping across Ghana!
*This Free shipping offer does not apply to destinations outside Ghana
They Call Me Archie
There are some life stories you just cannot beat. Each time the names of such champions drop, one might as well perform a rite of acknowledgment…any. Their lives have graced hundreds of lives, and hundreds of lives continue to be redeemed through them. They have seen it all. Done it all. They love and they are loved. These individuals have given, and still have more in store. According to the Canon of the Classics, these persons, even the gods envy.
Rosina Aboagye Acheampong is one such mortal. From the precocity of her childhood, her dance with life has been one amazing ball of faith … and chance, nay, destiny. These captivating pages reel out the adventures of a pathfinder, a mould breaker and a pacesetter. Yes, her name might be synonymous with Wesley Girls, but be it at the national or community level, to list what she has achieved is to embark on the impossible.
Beautifully, however, Archie the Matriarch does not seem to see the power of her influence. She only wants to give thanks and praise.
Broken For Use
Broken for Use is a moving, intimate memoir which takes you on a truly tumultuous journey with Rev’d Akua. By the time she takes you from her early days in school, through the various turns in her life that finally bring her to the priesthood, you feel you have experienced many lifetimes. She tells her story as it is, straight and unadorned.
Reverend Akua Buabema Ofori-Boateng is an expressive clergy and philanthropist with a strong belief in excellence.
The Bold New Normal
Have you ever wondered what it will take to transform each African country into a prosperous nation where each citizen has a real opportunity to thrive? Africa’s narrative has been shaped by a vision of the future that remains bleak. A vision that says a little more is okay for the African. It is time to challenge and change our paradigm of what great outcomes look like for an African country.
It is time for The Bold New Normal of an Africa where citizens of each country genuinely have the opportunity to prosper.
The formula for sustainable prosperity has been tried and tested world over. Why then do we continue to hope that a different method, that has thus far failed the continent, will create sustainable prosperity?
The Bold New Normal is a timely publication that coincides with the 400th anniversary of the start of slavery: the year of return. 400 years since the unraveling of African began, it is time to piece her back together and focus forward. It is surely the time for The Bold New Normal!
₵350.00 -
A Country to Love and to Serve: Memoirs of a Ghanaian Diplomat
This epic memoir chronicling the author’s diplomatic journey is a superb and enticing story, richly told. The narration provides great insights into the personal life and professional travails of a quintessential diplomat who rose from humble beginnings to be one of the eminent Ambassadors of the nation. Most fascinating is how adeptly the author combines the demands of motherhood and family with her tasks in the complex world of diplomacy.
The memoir provides great insights, important lessons and best practices in diplomatic practice that should be invaluable for the nation’s policy makers and diplomats. The story told through A COUNTRY TO LOVE AND TO SERVE should be a real inspiration for young diplomats and a must read for any student of diplomacy.
₵200.00 -
Leadership in Africa Redefined – Untold Stories
The story on leadership in Africa is not a good one. It is a story in which the key actors are often corrupt, authoritarian politicians. And yet, this is only one side of the story.
The untold story is that Africa is also home to leaders who are imaginative, adaptable, ethical, and empowering. These are leaders who are transforming the spaces they serve on this continent. They are redefining leadership in Africa.
The time has come where we need to stop defining our leadership by the worst of us. We need to learn from the best of us.
Taaka Awori’s Leadership in Africa Redefined offers concrete principles to guide the practice of this form of leadership. Using the stories and lessons from outstanding leaders on the continent, Taaka Awori illustrates the idea that your leadership reflects who you are as a person. Her hope is that this book will be an inspiration and a practical guide to support each reader in becoming the leader Africa needs and deserves.
₵75.00 -
Chasing the Elephant Into the Bush: The Politics of Complacency
Chasing the Elephant Into the Bush: The Politics of Complacency is an insider’s account of how the governing New Patriotic Party lost power in the closest elections in Africa’s history. The writer believes that providing an accurate account will begin the process of correcting the rumours, lies and myths that are out there about the 2008 elections in Ghana.
Throughout, the book is liberally sprinkled with quotes and historical references that makes it very informative and interesting. He begins with the state of the nation and the governing party as Ghana approached 2008.
He then takes the reader through the NPP primary and his own experiences as a losing candidate. There is candid discussion of the rivalries in the campaign that undermined its effectiveness. He takes the reader inside meetings and quotes some of the key players at key moments in the campaign.
There is candid discussion of the roles of the media, the security forces and civil society. The identification of issues and their use in the campaign is discussed thoroughly. While his sympathies are never in doubt, he is very objective and acknowledges the mistakes made by the campaign, the government and the party. He credits the NDC Campaign for doing certain things well. Amongst these are the deployment of President Mills and former President Rawlings as well as Vice-President John Mahama.
He reveals the roles of key people, including the President, the Presidential candidate and powerful groups, like the “Kyebi Mafia”. He offers candid assessments of all the key players. He suggests reasons for the NPP defeat and the way to recapture power.
This will be a very significant first cut and reference point for an account of the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Ghana.
₵320.00 -
The Boneshaker Politician
The Boneshaker Politician is an autobiography of A.K. Opoku. He narrates how he gave his life to Christ in a dramatic way while travelling in a boneshaker, a wooden truck. He recounts how the Lord used him by way of evangelism and church building and his involvement in an uncompromising undercover politics in the church. Meanwhile he had nursed a childhood ambition of being an active politician.
With all his “boneshaker” experience, he entered into politics and discovers that it was a different world altogether and bemoans the high moral and the financial entry requirements required of a Christian to engage in active politics. He raises question as to whether exhortations to get Christians involved in active politics is enough. He concludes with his family life and marvels at the art of God where four children of the same parentage and breed have four different characters and ambitions.
₵50.00The Boneshaker Politician
₵50.00 -
I Speak of Freedom
A selection from the speeches of Kwame Nkrumah up to 1960, linked by narrative.
The main theme is Ghana’s independence, political freedom preparing the way for a socialist programme of economic and social development, and an intensification of the struggle for the total liberation and unification of the African continent.
₵340.00I Speak of Freedom
₵340.00 -
When Strong Women Cry
“There is nothing more painful for a strong woman than when she is told to be strong or applauded for being strong, when in actual fact, she is broken and dying silently inside, hoping and wishing she could let it all out. It really hurts, especially, when she has been projecting herself, personally, as a strong woman”. Oheneyere Gifty Anti.
₵100.00When Strong Women Cry
₵100.00 -
The Presbyterian Church of Ghana (P.C.G.): History and Impact
Jesus the Christ proclaimed the Great commission at the close of his earthly work in the first century. But it was not until around the last quarter of the 15th century that, according to a Papal arrangement, the Portuguese reached the Ghanaian coast with the Gospel, but with an economic motive which was expressed as follows:
To divert to the coast and hence directly to Portugal the wealth of the gold trade across the Sahara, with the hope that the material gain therefrom would enable Portugal better wage that crusade against Islam.
Later, other European nations followed with Empire-building motives. This involved the natives in fighting European religious wars. This spilled over into Africa as the European nations took colonies.
Development in other parts of the world gave a spark to the buying and selling of humans as slaves. Europe came to regret the trade’s evil effect and, therefore, decided to compensate the bleeding African continent through holistic ministry spearheaded by missionaries.
This book traces how Ghana was colonized and evangelised. It narrows down to the activities of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society (BEMS). This eventually gave birth to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCC).
A colonial Governor complimented the Mission on the eve of World War 1 as follows:
“The government regards the work of the Basel Mission as incomparably the best in the Gold Coast (GC). It is no exaggeration to say that the Mission makes the G.C.”
The book highlights how the P.C.G. has continued in holistic ministry towards the national wellbeing.
The author Kofi Nkansa-Kyeremanteng who passed on at the age of 70 (in the year 2007) had blue Presbyterian blood running in his veins. He schooled and later taught in Presbyterian Educational institutions. Through his writing and publishing activities, dating back to 1976, Mr. Nkansa Kyeremanteng’s name has won attachment to literature pertaining to the church.
₵60.00 -
A Bit of Me
A powerful, motivational and uplifting book by Oheneyere Gifty Anti. A Bit of Me inspires readers to be the best version of themselves.
Oheneyere Gifty Anti, CEO of GDA Media shares nuggets about overcoming life’s struggles.
“A Bit of Me is too much of somebody’s life on open display for everyone to benefit from. The greatest treasures on earth are the stories of people’s lives which they generously share to encourage, warn and bless others. Reading A Bit of Me will transform and translate you to a higher level. This book simply says if I am alive and moving, you can also make it.” — Rev. Eastwood Anaba
Oheneyere is a multiple award-winning broadcast journalist and a well-respected motivational speaker in Africa and around the world. A proud product of Mfantsiman Girls Secondary School, she holds a Diploma in Journalism from the Ghana Institute of Journalism and a Masters Degree in International Journalism from City University, London. Oheneyere is the President and founder of the Girl in Need Foundation and the Awo Dansoa Reading Project. She is married to Nana Ansah Kwao IV, Chief of Akwamu Adumasa. She is a woman of crazy super faith.
₵45.00A Bit of Me
₵45.00 -
Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (African Writers Series)
This anthology introduces the African literature of incarceration to the general reader, the scholar, the activist and the student. The visions and prison cries of the few African nationalists imprisoned by colonialists, who later became leaders of their independent dictatorships and in turn imprisoned their own writers and other radicals, are brought into sharper focus, thereby critically exposing the ironies of varied generations of the efforts of freedom fighters.
Extracts of prose, poetry and plays are grouped into themes such as arrest, interrogation, torture, survival, release and truth and reconciliation.
Contributors include: Kunle Ajibade, Obafemi Awolowo, Steve Biko, Breyten Breytenbach, Dennis Brutus, Nawal El Saadawi, M J Kariuki, Kenneth Kaunda, Caesarina Kona Makhoere, Nelson Mandela, Emma Mashinini, Felix Mnthali, Augustino Nato, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kwame Nkrumah, Abe Sachs, Ken Saro Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, and Koigi wa Wamwere.
Although an often harrowing indictment of the history, culture and politics of the African continent and the societies from which this literature comes, the anthology presents excellent prose, poetry and drama, which stands up in its own right as serious literature to be cherished, read and studied.
₵45.00 -
In the Eye of the Storm: Autobiography of Justice Emile Francis Short (Hardcover)
This book recounts my upbringing, narrating the role my father played in inculcating in me the values of honesty, integrity and hard work. The book describes my life from secondary school through University and the twist and turns of my career. The main object in writing the book is to inspire public officials to discharge their functions “without fear or favour, ill will or affection.” It also seeks to encourage the youth to pursue hard work and do the right thing at all times. It hopes to discourage the youth from engaging in unethical practices like 419, sakawa, satanic or occultic practices to get rich quickly. Honesty does pay in the long run. The idea of sitting down to write about myself especially at age 70 was not an attractive proposition. However, I received encouragement from a number of persons who impressed upon me the need to describe how I navigated the journey as Ghana’s first Commissioner for the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and the challenges I encountered. My faith in Christ and how it has shaped my career are well articulated in the book.
Justice Emile Francis ShortJustice Emile Short’s memoir contains a powerful account of the life of a man whose local and international standing has generally beclouded a rich and fulfilling life history immersed in family, friends, community, and faith. Adopting a fluent narrative tinged with humor and transitional pauses and asides, this memoir presents a profound excursion into his life marked by detailed narrative of his experiences growing up in Ghana and abroad, education, love life, and professional development, and these will afford any reader a rare insight into the life of one of Africa’s, and certainly Ghana’s greatest sons. While many will find the chronology of his life’s story easy to identify with, his meticulous narration is truly a testament to the memoire’s overall richness and the depth of the author’s encounters and world views. Few memoirs open a window into an author’s life like this piece and the brazen frankness of his accounts illuminates the author and his lived experiences in the many episodes and phases of his years. The reader will find the book a lively and highly engaging read–one which piqued my own interest till the very end. I have hardly read any autobiography this revealing!
Prof. E. Kofi Abotsi
Dean, UPSA Law SchoolA very well told life story. Lovely in its brevity, but that seems to come at the expense of some of the important episodes narrated in the book, particularly the “Damascan” transformation from being a successful conventional elite professional Cape Coast lawyer and hustling in the UK (on the one hand); to becoming a “born again”/charismatic Christian, occupying high level state positions/public office, “speaking truth” to powerful politicians/slaying political tigers, and liberating the enslaved.
Prof. Gyimah Boadi₵200.00 -
Bookset: Biographies of Ghanaian Pioneers and Leaders for Children (5 books)
Age Range: 4 – 12 years
Two amazing books that introduce young people to great Ghanaian leaders and pioneers who contributed to the development of this country. Their roles in shaping the course of Ghana’s history, independence and social life are detailed as examples for study by our youth.
In addition, three early readers biographies of Esther Ocloo (food scientist and industrialist), VCRAC Crabbe (a man of the law) and Ephraim Amu (musician, teacher and inventor).
These five books will introduce your children to some of the important names in Ghana’s history, and even parents will enjoy refreshing their knowledge!
₵170.00₵175.00 -
Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba (Our Ancestories)
Age Range: 4 – 12 years
Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba is the true story of a girl who had a difficult birth but went on to become the Queen of two ancient African kingdoms.
Revered for her wisdom, courage, and strength, Njinga became a dominant political figure in Angola in the 1600s. This richly illustrated children’s book tells her story and the challenges she faced from the day she was born. Njinga must overcome the jealousy of her brother, the loss of her father, and the encroachment of the Portuguese at the dawn of a time of great trial for the African continent.
This is the story of hope and courage that shows every young girl is capable of greatness..
★ The Story of an Actual Legendary Queen
Queen Njinga is remembered for defying the odds and standing up for herself and her people.
★ A Narrative That Empowers and Motivates
Njinga’s story is inspiring because she is an outstanding example of female governance in the history of Africa.
★ An Author with Passion for African History
Born and raised in Nigeria, Ekiuwa Aire hopes that her books on African history will instill pride and acceptance in young minds about diverse cultures.
★ Beautiful, Vibrant Illustrations
Natalia Popova studied at Moscow State University where her interest in visual arts and illustration was born.
★ Exciting Historical Facts
Based on true events in Angola in the 1600s, the story of Queen Njinga is beautifully illustrated and presented in a way every child will enjoy and learn from. The book also includes a brief history of the Kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba, where they were located on a map, as well as information on Queen Njinga’s legacy.
₵45.00