Benjamin Kwakye

Snyder Poetry Prize Finalist 

Benjamin Kwakye concludes his trilogy on the modern African migrant’s experience in America with another dazzling medley of language, plot and outreach to our common humanity. In this final instalment, Count Tutu leaves his native Ghana for the United States seeking the feast of the famed American Dream. His anticipated banquet of dreams sours, however, when he is at once welcomed and rejected, torn by external and internal conflicts, soothed by the promise of romance (both literal and figurative), and inflicted with other deep emotional wounds with far reaching consequences. With the spacious array of the immigrant experience for a canvass, The Count’s False Banquet paints an impressive portrait of the pain of self-imposed banishment from home, the contradictory inescapable boundlessness and restrictions of longing, hope and desire, and the expansiveness of human will.

"The Count's False Banquet is a phenomenal tale with an enchanting spell. The book completes [Kwakye's] trilogy on the African migrant's experiences in America and draws his readers into the concourse of what amounts to an intriguing tale of human endeavor, enterprise and aspiration that speaks to all…
Kwakye impresses his reader with the vibrant power of description …. [His] adroitness and sophisticated language evoke the colorful descriptions and allusions of reputable authors such as Hughes, Dumas, Shakespeare, Soyinka, Laing, Achebe, and p'Bitek, all undergirding this novel with erudition without surrendering its accessibility…. In the end, The Count's False Banquet masterfully blends old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, literary and literal, into a brilliant work of literature."— World Literature Today

 "In a language which echoes no known poet's, a voice so singular in its unconventionality, and themes that capture the poet's people's history and reality in spectacular images, Benjamin Kwakye's Soul to Song pioneers a fresh path in contemporary African poetry." – Tanure Ojaide, poet and Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

An epic chronicle of Rwandan born Shama's struggles and triumphs as an immigrant.

"Aside from instances of brutal memory evoking the horrors of mass murder and bloodshed, this novel utilizes conflicts and plot—driven by unending tension and suspense in building hope amid a narrative that delves into the past—to conjure for the reader the relationships of Christian men and Muslim women who are bonded by forbidden love…. Kwakye [uses] … a novel divided into three books of suspense, tension, secrets and violence, to resurrect from the horrors of the past links that seem to find endless connections to the situations trailing the narratives of characters concerned with future dreams and goals." – Eclectica Magazine

Spanning multiple continents and countries, including Rwanda, the United States and Ghana, The Three Books of Shama is an epic chronicle of the life story of Rwandan born Shama Rugwe, following her from her birth to a Christian father and a Moslem mother, to her migration to the United States and her eventual nomination as Chief Justice of the United States. Identified as a Tutsi, Shama survives the Rwandan genocide at great cost, including the loss of her parents and brother, as well as a horrific personal assault that leaves deep emotional scars. Despite this, her migration to the US (and naturalization as a citizen) provides her with new opportunities, including her marriage to the son of an African-American lawyer and Ghanaian migrant, and her enrollment at Harvard Law School, where she excels. Shama gains notoriety after defending two of social opprobrium: a white supremacist (under pressure from her law firm) and a Hutu man who marries her aunt and is later accused of killing Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. And then all hell breaks loose when she is eventually nominated as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. The ensuing senate confirmation hearings and opposition to her nomination unearth stubborn gender, racial and xenophobic beliefs, as well as religious biases.

An epic novel on the African immigrant experience.

"The novel raises important questions about identity and belonging as it discusses both Badu's individual struggles and the more generalized experience of the modern African man." World Literature Today

"This is a moving and readable story in which one individual's choices and experiences speak for wider and more universal concerns, encompassing radical upheaval and personal development; crossing borders, crossing continents." New Internationalist

"With a powerful message of the place of the modern African man, "The Other Crucifix" is a fine read that shouldn't be missed for world literary fiction collections." Midwest Book Review

"[A] captivating tale of double estrangement… In a nutshell, The Other Crucifix is the handiwork of a literary virtuoso, anchored in the themes of psychological and physical exile and the quest for self-identity. The pedagogical import of this novel resides in its suitability to the young and the old. The language is clear and free of sophistry. Students and teachers with an interest in African history, languages and cultures would find the text an invaluable resource." Peter W. Vakunta in Pambazuka News

"With The Other Crucifix , Kwakye has given us a book that manages to both entertain and educate, often touching on issues that Africans in the Diaspora have grappled with, as they try to integrate into their adopted countries." Africa Book Club

"The Other Crucifix stands out because apart from painting for readers the obvious challenges for Africans abroad, such as communication and other familiar things, [it] manages to clearly define the deep questions in the heart about race and differences." Daily Graphic

"Benjamin Kwakye is a novelist whose genius becomes more apparent with each novel he writes. The Other Crucifix, his third, is a must read for anyone who loves a good story. But this work is no ordinary narrative of the transplanted African in search of an education in the West. Benjamin Kwakye demonstrates why he is the grandmaster of storytelling, and with the creation of Jojo Badu, the often naïve narrator, we come to know a character who by turns is infuriating and endearing, and whom we see mature into a responsible adult. Yet, this is no mere bildungsroman, Benjamin Kwakye's mastery of the novel's form and language enables him to economically capture the breath, depth and emotional energies that inform the actions of the characters whose lives speak not only to the specificity of life in an elite Liberal Arts College, or being in Ghana intoxicated by the heady promise of the post-independence era, or caught-up in the transformative period of the U.S. during the 60s and 70s. The Other Crucifix is a modern-day epic that embodies the wisdom of the Sankofa bird as it reviews the last century: the lessons learned or not, the paths taken or untrod, and prepares us, like Jojo, as we finish reading the last page, that "life starts again." There is hope resonating in this gem of a novel."
Prof. Vincent Odamtten

Legacy of Phantoms narrates the internal battles of the twin Kakra as he struggles to come to terms with a past so jarring he is able to recall its details in a disjointed and piecemeal manner only. It entails intense sibling rivalry that flirts with fratricide, shocking betrayals, joy and pain, and triumph and failure. As his memory negotiates this complex terrain and as he relives past experiences, Kakra comes to the realization that he must embrace the past in order to assert control over his future. In language at once poetic and accessible, Legacy of Phantoms offers a tale that stands as a powerful metaphor of Africa’s socio-political past and present.

"'Legacy of Phantoms' has a lot to offer in fashioning a new direction for African literature. The style is engaging and the use of idioms and metaphor rich. Perhaps the greatest contribution this novel will make to the corpus of African literature is its psychoanalytical appraisal of the past through the smoky lens of the present, with the future in sight. Students of African politics will find the novel helpful in understanding the psychoanalytical considerations that inform some of the present colonial discourses. The universal truth that the novel tries to advance, that the mastery of logic, truth, communalism, is always present but that it is also displaced and is never completely absorbed by the generality of the people. Scholars will find the position of the novel and its writer engaging." -- Dr. Sola Adeyemi