Nationality Ghanaian Niece Hadar Busia-Singleton | Siblings Akosua Busia | |
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Full Name Abena P.A. Busia Occupation Lecturer, writer, poet, feminist Books Testimonies of exile, Traces of a Life: A Collection of Elegies and Praise Poems Parents Kofi Abrefa Busia, Naa Morkor Busia People also search for Stanlie James, Akosua Busia, Kofi Abrefa Busia, Naa Morkor Busia | ||
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 actress Akosua Busia. Abena Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University.
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Early life
Abena Busia was born in Accra, into the Yenfri Royal family in Wenchi in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana, to Kofi Abrefa Busia, one-time Ghana's Head of State, and Naa Morkor Busia. 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 and currently the Chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.
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). Her work is included in such anthologies as Daughters of Africa (ed. Margaret Busby, 1992).
Awards and recogntion
Abena is Co Founder and Chair of Busia Foundation International a non-government organisation set up to in honour of Ghana's Former Prime Minister, Kofi Abrefa Busia.