Abena Busia

Abena Busia
Born	Abena Busia Ghana
Nationality	Ghanaian
Occupation(s)	Lecturer, writer, poet

Abena P. A. Busia (born 1953) is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist and lecturer. She is a daughter of former Ghana Head of State Kofi Abrefa Busia, and is the sister of Akosua Busia. Abena Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University.

Early life

Abena Busia was born in Accra, Ghana, to Kofi Abrefa Busia, one-time Ghana's Head of State, and Naa Morkor Busia. She is the sister of Akosua Busia, an actress, film director and author. She spent her childhood at home as well as in the Netherlands and Mexico before relocating to Oxford, where her family finally settled.

Education

Abena Busia earned a B.A. degree in English Language and Literature at St. Anne's College, Oxford, in 1976, and a D.Phil in Social Anthropology (Race Relations) at St. Antony's College in 1984. She has been an external tutor at Ruskin College, the labour relations college affiliated to the University of Oxford, and a visiting lecturer in the Program of African and Afro-American Studies at Yale University. She has also won a number of post-doctoral fellowships including an Andrew Mellon Fellowship in the English department of Bryn Mawr College, and an Institute for American Cultures Fellowship at the Center for Afro-American Studies at UCLA.

Career

Busia is the co-director of Women Writing Africa Project and is also currently an associate professor at Rutgers University. She has also taught at other renowned institutions such as Yale and the University of Ghana. She has published widely on black women's literature, colonial discourse, and post-colonial studies, and scholarly books she has co-edited include Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women (1993) and Beyond Survival: African Literature and the Search for New Life (1999). In addition, she is the author of two volumes of poetry: Testimonies of Exile (1990) and Traces of Life (2008).

Selected bibliography

Poetry

• Testimonies of Exile — poetry, illustrated by Akosua Busia (Africa World Press, 1990; ISBN 978-0865431614)
• Traces of a Life: A Collection of Elegies and Praise Poems (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2008; ISBN 978-0955507977)

As editor

• Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, co-editor with Stanlie M. James (Routledge, 1993; ISBN 978-0415073370)
• Beyond Survival: African Literature and the Search for New Life, co-editor with Kofi Anyidoho and Anne Adams (Africa World Press, 1999; ISBN 978-0865437098)
• Women Writing Africa: West Africa and Sahel (2005)

See also

• Kofi Abrefa Busia
• Akosua Busia
• List of Ghanaian writers