Fran Osseo-Asare

Born in Oregon in 1949, the 3rd daughter of working class parents (mom from Appalachia, dad the son of a Norwegian immigrant tenant farmer). Family lore says dad wouldn't look at me at first, he was so disappointed I wasn't a boy. The first college graduate in my family, I went off to the University of California in the 1960s, an exhilarating introduction to the world of ideas and action. I also met a fellow activist student, a man from newly independent Ghana, and we fell in love. Before marrying, I insisted on going to live in his country without him for a year (the source for my first book). We married in 1972 and raised our first 3 children back and forth between the U.S. and Ghana (we adopted 2 nephews from Ghana in 2002 to raise the number to 5). Gradually, my love of writing, food, travel, and for my adopted family and friends in Africa, and my extreme frustration at the media coverage of African cuisine, led me to found BETUMI: The African Culinary Network (for more about us, see "Story" at www.betumi.com) Currently, I spend my time working on books, articles, presentations, my website, blog, podcasts, research, cooking classes, etc. about African cuisine and food culture, especially sub-Saharan Africa/West Africa/Ghana. MSW from U.C. Berkeley in community org. and social planning, PhD from Penn State in rural sociology w/emphasis on social change and African development.