Truth Without Reconciliation
{{Short description|2018 non-fiction book}}
{{Italic title}}
{{Infobox book
| author = Abena Ampofoa Asare
| isbn = 9780812250398
| pub_date = 2018
| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press
| image = Book Cover Truth Without Reconciliation.jpg
| name = Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana
| oclc = 1041139857
}}
Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana is a book by American academic Abena Ampofoa Asare. It was published in 2018 by University of Pennsylvania Press as part of their Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series.
Author
Abena Ampofoa Asare is an American academic and associate professor of Modern African Affairs & History at Stony Brook University.{{Cite web |title=Dr.Abena Ampofoa Asare |url=https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/africana-studies/people/_faculty-staff/asare.php |access-date=2024-09-25 |website=Stony Brook University |language=en}} Her family moved to the United States from Ghana in the 1980s.{{Harvnb|Asare|2018|p=ix}}
Content
Truth Without Reconciliation is based on the archives and stories gathered of Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission(NRC), a commission established by the government of Ghana to document human rights abuses in the country from the 1950s to the 1990s. In the book, Ampofoa Asare argues that the NRC functioned more as a public history project than either a nationalistic attempt to create a new history for Ghana or an academic attempt to discover the truth. She examines many of the stories that she read in the NRC archives, and combines them with historical background as well as with the history of the NRC itself.
Reception
Reviews of the book were generally positive. In a book review published by Contemporary Justice Review, Robert Ame described Truth Without Reconciliation as a "well-researched, critical, and historical masterpiece" with a "unique approach" to Ghana's truth commissions. Ame commented favourably about Asare's decision to avoid describing the commissions "as either good or bad", instead seeing the stories archived by it as a "snapshot of Ghanaians’ perceptions".{{Cite journal |last=Ame |first=Robert |date=2020-10-01 |title=Truth without reconciliation: a human rights history of ghana: by Abena Ampofoa Asare, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, xi + 244 pp. $79.95 Hardback 978-0-8122-5039-8 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10282580.2020.1819764 |journal=Contemporary Justice Review |language=en |volume=23 |issue=4 |pages=581–583 |doi=10.1080/10282580.2020.1819764 |issn=1028-2580 |via=Taylor and Francis|url-access=subscription }} Similarly, Kwasi Konadu described the book as "thoughtful" in its focus on Ghanaian's lived experiences. However, his review argues that because NRC did not examine the actions of powerful corporations and leaders such as Jerry Rawlings, he, unlike Ampofoa Asare, viewed the historical human rights abuses in Ghana as a product of ideologies that could not be solved by recording stories or through truth commissions.{{Cite journal |last=Konadu |first=Kwasi |author-link=Kwasi Konadu |date=2020-01-30 |title=Abena Ampofoa Asare. Truth without Reconciliation. A Human Rights History of Ghana. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. xi + 244 pp. 1 illustration. Bibliography. Index. $79.95. Cloth. ISBN: 9780812250398. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0002020619000751/type/journal_article |journal=African Studies Review |language=en |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=E19–E20 |doi=10.1017/asr.2019.75 |issn=0002-0206}} Tawia Ansah, in the African Journal of Legal Studies, was somewhat more critical. She disagreed with Ampofoa Asare's worries that sharing these stories with a wide audience could contribute to the victimization of African women. She referred to Ampofoa Asare's attempts to document the stories as "unexceptionable" in the world of academia, and argues that she, sometimes, "succumbs to a totalistic view of Ghana’s political reality". However, she also describes Ampofoa Asare's attempt to record unclear stories with no clear line between the victims and the abusers as "bold", and compares it favourably to other, similar attempts that Ansah feels "risk falling prey to [their] own redundancy".{{Cite journal |last=Ansah |first=Tawia B. |date=2019-12-18 |title=Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana, written by Abena Ampofoa Asare |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/ajls/12/1/article-p107_5.xml?language=en |journal=African Journal of Legal Studies |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=107–114 |doi=10.1163/17087384-12340045|url-access=subscription }}
References
{{Reflist}}
= Bibliography =
- {{Cite book |last=Asare |first=Abena Ampofoa |title=Truth without reconciliation: A human rights history of Ghana |date= |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-0-8122-5039-8 |edition=1 |series=Pennsylvania studies in human rights |location=Philadelphia |language=en}}
External links
- [https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16t6k8t JSTOR link]
Category:2018 non-fiction books
Category:University of Pennsylvania Press books