ACCUTE members will be saddened to hear of the death of one of global English Studies’ most distinguished scholars, poets, and educators.  Professor Kofi Awoonor (University of Ghana), Chair of Comparative Literature at SUNY (Stony Brook), Head of English at the University of Cape Coast, and Ghanaian ambassador to the United Nations from 1990-94, was killed September 21^st, 2013 in the Westgate Mall shooting incident in Nairobi.

Kofi Awoonor was celebrated within African and Commonwealth/postcolonial literary circles for his anti-colonial critical writing, and for his passionate, genre-crossing creative work. His poetry brought modernism into conversation with the rhythms of Ewe orature. His novel This Earth, My Brother (1971) is taught in English courses around the world.