Peggy Cripps-Appiah
Enid Margaret Peggy Cripps-Appiah (born May 21, 1921 in Lechlade , Gloucestershire, Great Britain, † February 11, 2006 in Kumasi , Ghana) was a children's author. Appiah was the daughter of the British politician Sir Richard Stafford Cripps , wife of the Ghanaian lawyer and politician Joe Appiah and mother of the philosopher Anthony Appiah .
childhood and education
Cripps-Appiah was born as the youngest of four children under the name Enid Margaret Cripps. She has been nicknamed Peggy or Peg, by which she has become known, since early childhood. She wrote her first works as a child.
Cripps-Appiah attended Queen's College and later studied at the University of Edinburgh . She later moved to Florence to study art history, but had to leave this training in a rush due to the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. Cripps-Appiah began studying again in Edinburgh, but dropped out in favor of training at Whitehall Secretarial College.
After the war, she learned painting for a while in Lugano and later enrolled at the Anglo-French Art Center in St. John's Wood in London.
Career and family
After graduation, Cripps-Appiah worked as a secretary for her father, who was the British ambassador to Moscow at the time. Due to the course of the war, she left Russia in 1942 and returned to England. Here she worked for the Ministry of Information until the end of the war.
Cripps-Appiah worked from 1951 to 1952 as a secretary for the Racial Unity, an association against racism. Here she first met her future husband Joseph Emmanuel Appiah , who was president of the West African Students' Union (WAST) at the time. The engagement to Appiah took place in 1952 in London. It was still kept secret at that time and was not disclosed until 1953, which caused a sensation. In June 1953, the news of the couple's wedding was featured in the UK and Ghana. The wedding was attended by high-ranking political figures from both countries.
After the wedding in Ghana, the couple briefly returned to England, as Appiah was finishing his law degree there. In May 1954, Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in London as the couple's first child. In November 1954, Cripps-Appiah and her small family moved to what was then the British colony of the Gold Coast , while the independence movement was expanding here. Joe Appiah became an independent advocate, noted lawyer, and politician. Cripps-Appiah initially withdrew mainly into private life and was again a mother in 1955, this time to her daughter Ama Appiah. Further daughters followed in 1960 with Adwoa Appiah and in 1962 with Abena Appiah.
In addition to family life, she supported her husband from the beginning as a secretary in his office in Kumasi. In 1962, Joe Appiah was elected to parliament, so that Cripps-Appiah had more representative duties. As the wife of a leading Ghanaian politician, she was one of the leading figures in the social field in Ghana.
After Joe Appiah was imprisoned as a political prisoner of the then President and a former close friend of the Kwame Nkrumah family , Cripps-Appiah did not leave Ghana, but instead looked after the family in Kumasi. In late 1962, Joe Appiah was released and returned to his practice as a lawyer. After the fall of Nkrumah in 1966, Joe Appiah was successful again in politics. Cripps-Appiah himself remained active in the social field and began to write children's books himself.
Even after the death of her husband Joe in 1990, Cripps-Appiah remained in Ghana and published a large number of books.
death
Cripps-Appiah died at the age of 84 in Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana on February 11, 2006 after an illness.
Private library
Cripps-Appiah has been known since she moved into her home in Mbrom by opening her private library to the children in the wider neighborhood. This library was a not unimportant educational factor at that time and made Cripps-Appiah widely known. Cripps-Appiah had this library equipped with new books over the course of over thirty years and made them available to a wide audience.
bibliography
- 1966, Ananse the spider: Tales from an Ashanti Village
- 1967, Tales of an Ashanti Father
- 1968, Children of Ananse
- 1969 The Pineapple Child and Other Tales from Asante
- 1971, Yao and the Python, London, Evans
- 1971, The Lost Earring, London, Evans
- 1971, A Smell of Onions
- 1972, Why There are So Many Roads
- 1972, Why Hyena Does Not Care For Fish and Other Tales of the Ashanti Gold Weights
- 1972, Gift o the Mmoatia, Accra, Ghana Publishing
- 1972, Why there are so many Roads, Lagos, African University Press
- 1976, Ring of Gold, London
- 1976, A Dirgee Too Soon, Accra, Ghana Publishing
- 1989, Tales of an Ashanti Father, Bosto; Beacon Press
- 1991, The Twins, Accra, Quick Service Books
- 1991 Abena and the Python, Accra, Quick Service Books
- 1991, Afua and the Mouse, Accra, Quick Service Books
- 1991, Kofi and the Crow, Accra, Quick Service Books
- 1993, Kyekyekulee, Grandmothers Tales, Accra Quick Service Books
- 1995, The Rubbish Heap, Accra, Asempa
- 1995, New Rattletat, New Namibia Books
- 1995, Busy Body, Accra, Asempa
- 2006, Bu Me Bé: Proverbs of the Akan
Honors
- Honorary Doctorate, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
- Order of the British Empire
See also
Web links
- Obituary, Guardian (English)
- Obituary, GhanaWeb (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cripps-Appiah, Peggy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Appiah, Peggy; Cripps, Peggy |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Ghanaian writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 21, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lechlade , Gloucestershire |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 11, 2006 |
| Place of death | Kumasi , Ghana |