The Akan Diaspora in the Americas Kwasi Konadu Borough of Manhattan Community College, [email protected]

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The Akan Diaspora in the Americas Kwasi Konadu Borough of Manhattan Community College, Kkonadu@Bmcc.Cuny.Edu

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter Volume 13 Article 10 Issue 2 June 2010 6-1-2010 The Akan Diaspora in the Americas Kwasi Konadu Borough of Manhattan Community College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan Recommended Citation Konadu, Kwasi (2010) "The Akan Diaspora in the Americas," African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter: Vol. 13 : Iss. 2 , Article 10. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol13/iss2/10 This New Books is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Konadu: The Akan Diaspora in the Americas New Book The Akan Diaspora in the Americas By Kwasi Konadu Oxford University Press, Hardcover 324 pp., ISBN-13: 978-0195390643, 2010. Description from the Publisher: In his groundbreaking study of the Akan diaspora, Konadu demonstrates how this cultural group originating in West Africa both engaged in and went beyond the familiar diasporic themes of maroonage, resistance, and freedom. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Akan never formed a majority among other Africans in the Americas. But their leadership skills in war and political organization, efficacy in medicinal plant use and spiritual practice, and culture archived in the musical traditions, language, and patterns of African diasporic life far outweighed their sheer numbers. Konadu argues that a composite Akan culture calibrated between the Gold Coast and forest fringe made the contributions of the Akan diaspora possible. The book examines the Akan experience in Guyana, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, former Danish and Dutch colonies, and North America, and how those early experiences foreground the modern engagement and movement of diasporic Africans and Akan people between Ghana and North America. Locating the Akan variable in the African diasporic equation allows scholars and students of the Americas to better understand how the diasporic quilt came to be and is still evolving. Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2010 1.

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Book Reviews
African Studies Quarterly | Volume 10, Issue 4 | Spring 2009 BOOK REVIEWS Kwasi Konadu. Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society. New York: Routledge, 2007. 240p. The historical analysis of conceptions of health and healing in many traditional African societies offer an interesting avenue for the study of the contradictions and ambivalences within definitions of medical knowledge and the concept of disease. Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society brings to mind the challenges of writing and investigating the therapeutic knowledge of indigenous societies and provides important suggestions for the study of medicine and knowledge systems in Africa. As much about therapeutic knowledge as about culture, it adds to our understanding of the resilience of traditional practices in contemporary Africa. Kwasi Konadu consciously modeled his discussion of traditional Bono-Takyiman (Akan, Ghana) medical knowledge to refute the work of Dennis M. Warren in “Religion, Disease, and Medicine among the Bono-Takyiman,” which relied on the healing knowledge of one traditional healer (Nana Kofi Donkor) as the baseline data in looking at the work of several indigenous healers. Konadu argues that although Warren’s work is laudable, “it must be stated that the experiences, perceptions, and levels of competence amongst healers are not identical, and to use one person as a standard or benchmark seems problematic in the articulation of an ‘ethnomedical system’ authenticated by so few sources that possess equivalent levels of in- depth medical knowledge and aptitude” (xxix). Konadu also hopes for his work to serve as foundation on which future research into indigenous medicine and knowledge would be embedded.
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