Professor Kwesi Yankah launched his book titled “The Pen at Risk, Spilling My Little Beans,” on August 30, 2023, at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The event was attended by a cross-section of dignitaries from the academia, politics, and business community.
“The Pen at Risk, Spilling My Little Beans” is a memoir that sheds light on the life experiences of the former minister of state in charge of tertiary education, as a columnist during the era of the military regime.
In an interview with the media, Professor Yankah said that he was inspired to write the book to give an account of the turbulent times in the past compared to contemporary times.
“Since I was 27, I have been in the public domain as far back as 1977 when I started writing my column for ‘The Catholic Standard’ and these are times when the press was openly not free. Everybody knew it, so we had to hide under pseudonyms and the column that I wrote for about three years during the military regime of Acheampong through Akufo and Rawlings was called “Abosam fire man.”
“It was much later that people got to know who was behind all those pieces they were reading because quite a good number of outspoken lecturers and journalists were galled. But I was lucky to have hidden under that pseudonym to say whatever I wanted to say without being identified.”
The book was reviewed by Manasseh Azure Awuni, Araba Koomson, Dr. Collins Badu Agyeman, and others, who praised Professor Yankah for the wonderful literary piece.
Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni speaks highly of the book, indicating that “The Pen at Risk is more than a memoir. It is a piece of authentic, unvarnished history by a writer and public intellectual who is too modest to accept the title of a historian, but who witnessed and chronicled the most intriguing epochs of Ghana’s national life.”
“Laced with innate Fante humour, this book is a piece of deep but entertaining non-fiction that is told with the demystified simplicity of one of Ghana’s greatest academics and writers. Kwesi Yankah is a gift to humanity, and this memoir is a greater gift to an unfortunate generation like mine that did not live in the era of the incisive writings of the great Kwatriot.”
The ceremony was also attended by Deputy Education Minister, Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Owusu, Dr. Sam Jonah, and Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kwesi Yankah is the author of two award-winning books, Speaking for the Chief, which won the Gold Book Award by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric, which won the Ghana Book Award.
In 2021, he presented his intellectual biography through Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities.
Prof. Yankah is a well-travelled scholar, former university Vice Chancellor, an award-winning public intellectual and a community activist.
He was, until 2021, Ghana’s Minister of State in charge of tertiary education.