• Special Book Launch Set: Autographed Hardcover of From Achinakrom to Pro-Vice Chancellor (plus paperback and Emancipation book)

    This is a special launch set – limited – that includes an autographed copy of the hardcover of Prof Florence Dolphyne’s new autobiography, a paperback version of the autobiography and a copy of her best-selling book The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective.

    Blurb for the Autobiography

    An autobiography serves the purpose of relating experiences of the writer. These are usually personal experiences and readers can draw inspiration from such experiences.

    This is a book written by a renowned academician, but unlike many books written by academics, it reads like a story written by an accomplished novelist. It tells the story of a girl of very humble parentage who was able, by dint of hard work and divine providence, to make it to the very apex of academia. It is a book that tells the story of ‘Mmofraturo’, synonymous with the training of girls to influence their world before the advent of militant feminism. It is a story that gives another peep at the practice of racism in Europe.

    But then, it is also the book that confirms the subtle discrimination that women are often subjected to in our education system, even at the highest level.

    Moreover, it is a story that tells the history of the practice of education in Ghana over a number of decades. Then, the writer draws us into the age-old issue of family life, foster children, biological children, and the Ghanaian family set up.

    From Achinakrom to Pro-Vice Chancellor is a book about friendship and love that tells the story of women, individually and in groups trying to help make others enjoy the life of work and leisure. Furthermore, this book gives a hint that speaking one’s first language can be the source of the survival of an individual in certain critical situations.

    This inspiring story is also a personal history of Ghana from pre-independence by someone who has helped to shape Ghana’s education system, women’s rights during the UN Decade for Women, and human rights through Ghana’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is a story of a phenomenal woman who has made Ghana and Achinakrom proud.

  • Revolution and Democracy in Ghana: The Politics of Jerry Rawlings

    Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who passed away on 12 November 2020, aged 73 years, dramatically appeared on Ghana’s political scene 40 years earlier. In May 1979, Rawlings was briefly jailed following an unsuccessful coup attempt. Rawlings and his comrades were revolted by Ghana’s corruption and economic decline at the hands of its ruling generals. A few weeks later, on 4 June 1979, Rawlings was released from prison by a group of disgruntled soldiers and took power following a successful coup d’état. Following a brief, but turbulent, few months in power, Rawlings’ Armed Forces Revolutionary Council handed over to an elected government in September 1979. Twenty-seven months later, on 31 December 1981, he was back in power, again by coup d’état. This time it was not a brief stay in the hot seat: Rawlings, leader of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), comprising three civilians and three armed forces personnel, remained in power for more than a decade. Seeking to justify the coup, Rawlings claimed that the PNDC was a necessary response to Ghana’s political and economic crisis. In January 1993, democracy returned to Ghana. Jerry Rawlings was popularly elected president twice, eventually standing down in January 2001, as the 1992 constitution demanded. Beginning his political career as a military figure with revolutionary aspirations, Rawlings ended it as a twice democratically-elected civilian president.

    These are the brief facts about the political career of Flight-Lieutenant, later President, Jerry Rawlings. More than three years after his passing, Rawlings remains a pivotal, absolutely central, figure in Ghana. His enduring influence in Ghana may be second only to that of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. On the other hand, there is no more controversial figure in Ghana’s political and economic history than Rawlings. More than two decades after he left political office, nothing divides Ghanaians more than their opinions regarding him. This book seeks to explain how and why Rawlings and the PNDC progressed from an undemocratic military-based regime to laying the foundations for Ghana’s three decades of multi-party democracy. Was Rawlings a patriot who believed passionately in Ghana and did all he could to make the country succeed? Or was he a wrecker who wanted to bring the post-colonial edifice tumbling down in a misguided attempt at revolution? The aim of this book is to enable the reader to draw their own conclusions on these questions.

     

     

  • The Teller of Secrets (HarperVia Edition)

    In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women.

    Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial “secret keeper” of her family, as tight-lipped about her father’s adultery as she is about her half-sisters’ sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women’s secrets and men’s secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places.

    As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family’s complicated past and troubled present, as well as society’s many double standards that limit her and other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways.

    Funny, fresh, and fiercely original, The Teller of Secrets marks the American debut of one of West Africa’s most exciting literary talents.

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