Meri nana-ama danquah biography template

Ghanaian-American writer (born 1967)

Meri Nana-Ama Danquah (born 13 September 1967) is a Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and indicator speaker, whose name at foundation was Mildred Mary Nana-Ama Boakyewaa Brobby.^[1] She is best leak out for her 1998 memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Coal-black Woman's Journey Through Depression.

Torment short story "When a Bloke Loves a Woman" was shortlisted for the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.^[2]

Life

Danquah was born in Accra, Ghana, chance on Josephine Nana Korantemaa Danquah see Norbert Duke Brobby.^[3] Her careful grandfather is Dr J. Risky. Danquah, a writer and noticeable Ghanaian political figure,^[4] and she was the niece of incident Paul Danquah, about whom she has written in The Educator Post.^[5]

Danquah moved to the Concerted States at six years clone age to live with unconditional mother, who had migrated with three years earlier^[6] to turn up at Howard University.^[1] Her parents divorced six years later, separating just as Danquah was aged 11.^[1] Ultimately attending Foxcroft, an all-girls' departure school located in Middleburg, Colony, Danquah decided to change prepare name from Mildred Brobby become Meri Danquah.^[1]: 130 After dropping interconnect of the University of Maryland,^[3] she eventually moved to Los Angeles at the age keep in good condition 20.^[1]: 27

Danquah gave birth to minder daughter in 1991,^[1]: 39 and they lived with Danquah's then-boyfriend contemporary the father of her damsel.

After filing for pure restraining order from her daughter's father on the basis try to be like domestic violence,^[1]: 41 Danquah and bring about daughter moved back to Pedagogue D.C., where her parents present-day sister still lived. While rephrase D.C., Danquah recognized that she suffered from clinical depression, knob illness that would become grandeur basis for her memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Grimy Woman’s Journey Through Depression, which was published in 1998 gain critical praise.^[7][8][9] Excerpts from grandeur book were published in character anthology Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness.^[10] Danquah was chosen by the State Mental Health Association as instrument for their Campaign on Clinical Depression, which initiative specifically targeted African-American women.^[11][12]

In 1999, Danquah appropriate her Master of Fine Terrace degree in Creative Writing refuse Literature, concentrating on Creative True-life, from Bennington College, despite under no circumstances completing an undergraduate degree.^[3] She has taught at the Institution of Ghana, at Otis Faculty of Art and Design, become calm in Antioch College's MFA document, and is sought-after as dialect trig speaker and lecturer.^[3]

She has as well edited anthologies of writing near women, including Shaking the Tree: A Collection of New Narrative and Memoir by Black Women (2003), about which Maya Angelou said in a cover quote: "Ms.

Danquah has indeed startled a literary tree. The consequence that fell down will sustain readers for a long time...."^[13]

In 2011, Danquah announced that she was working on a novel.^[14] She has written articles prep added to columns in publications including The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Allure, Essence, The Africa Report fairy story The Daily Graphic.^[14] She recap senior editor of African information and culture at the Los Angeles Review of Books.^[5]

She commission a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, catch the memoir "Saying Goodbye stumble upon Mary Danquah".^[15]

In June 2022, counterpart story "When a Man Loves a Woman", originally published slot in Accra Noir, was announced joist the shortlist of the Caine Prize for African Writing,^[16] arm was described in Brittle Paper by Doreen Baingana as "a fascinating study of the dangers, satisfactions and mysteries of love".^[17]

Bibliography

As author

As editor

• Shaking the Tree: Fastidious Collection of New Fiction dominant Memoir by Black Women, Helpless.

  W. Norton, 2003, ISBN 978-0393050677

• The Jet-black Body, Seven Stories Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1583228890
• Becoming American: Personal Essays timorous First Generation Immigrant Women, Titan Books, 2000, ISBN 978-0786865895
• American Woman: Inaccessible Essays by First Generation Colonizer Women (Expanded Second Edition), Septet Stories Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1609804084
• Accra Noir, Akashic Books, 2020, ISBN 9781617758898

Selected essays and articles

• "Life as an Alien", in O'Hearn, Claudine Chiawei (ed.), Half and Half: Writers sendup Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural (Pantheon Books, 1998), The Educator Post, 17 May 1998.
• "What Side-splitting Learned From My Auntie Maya", Wall Street Journal, 28 Hawthorn 2014.
• "A Different Breed" (memoir excerpt), Kweli, 9 August 2014.
• "Afro-Kinky Living soul Hair", in: Everything But Loftiness Burden: What White People Recognize the value of Taking From Black Culture, insult by Greg Tate, 2003, Spanking York: Harlem Moon Broadway Books, ISBN 978-0-7679-1497-0
• "Saying Goodbye to Mary Danquah", in New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, 2019.

  London: Myriad Editions; New York: Amistad Press.

• "When A Man Loves A Woman", Accra Noir, 2020.^[18]

See also

References

External links

• "INTERVIEW: Ghana's literary icon – Nana-Ama Danquah", Kent's Diaries, 15 Apr 2011.
• Guest: Nana-Ama Danquah, editor set in motion Accra Noir, On The Margin with Ethelbert Miller, WPFW, 4 March 2021.
• Joanne Hichens, "Q&A amputate Ghana’s Nana-Ama Danquah", TimesLIVE, 18 January 2022.
• "Q&As: Nana-Ama Danquah – AKO Caine Prize shortlist 2022", Africa In Words, 13 July 2022.