Aidoo, Ama Ata 1942–

Ama Ata Aidoo 1942–

Ghanaian writer

Brought Women’s Roles to Stage

Wrote Poetry and Political Love Story

Selected writings

Sources

Award-winning Ghanaian author, poet, critic, playwright, and feminist Ama Ata Aidoo has made it her life’s work to explore the difficult and complex effects of progress on the role of women in African culture. Her work is often semi-autobiographical—she has struggled with many of the same issues that challenge her characters. She has tackled these controversial issues of Africa’s cultural evolution in such novels as Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint and Changes: A Love Story, as well as in a host of poems, collected in Someone Talking to Sometime and An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems, and short stories, namely in the collection No Sweetness Here. She also has written the plays The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa, and numerous essays. In a 1993 review, one Publisher’s Weekly critic declared Aidoo a “remarkable writer” who “writes with intense power.”

Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born in 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, in central Ghana, then known by its colonial name, the Gold Coast. She was born into a Fante family and grew up as tribal royalty—her liberal-minded father was a chief in her town. After her graduation from Wesley Girls High School in Cape Coast, Aidoo began studying drama and literature at the University of Ghana at Legon, where she was a student from 1961-64. With her father’s encouragement, she earned her bachelor’s degree in English. At 15, Aidoo was asked what she wanted to do for a career and, without really knowing why, replied that she wanted to be a poet. When her entry won a short-story award, she only discovered she had won when she saw her name in the newspaper. “I believe these moments were crucial for me because … I had articulated a dream … it was a major affirmation for me as a writer, to see my name in print,” she said in an interview located at the BBC World Service online.

Brought Women’s Roles to Stage

Aidoo could not resist the appeal of writing for the stage and seeing her stories brought to life. She was particularly interested in the Fante dramatic style that was popular in the 1930s, and studied with Efua Sutherland, a leading Ghanaian dramatist. It was during her undergraduate years that she produced her first play, Dilemma of a Ghost, which was staged by the Student’s Theater at the University of Ghana in 1964. In the play, a Westernized African man returns to his African village with an African-American wife. In the first of her many works that explore the roles of women in African culture, Aidoo tackled difficult and controversial issues in Dilemma of a Ghost. The African-American wife must face criticism among the other village women and remains an outsider because the choices the couple make are deemed untraditional.

After college Aidoo remained at the University as a junior research fellow at the Institute of African studies. It was likely this experience, from 1964-66, that influenced Aidoo’s use of African oral traditions in her work. Ghana gained independence in 1957, when Aidoo was still a teen, and the spirit of socialism and Pan-Africanism of the time likely impacted her as well. Aidoo earned a creative writing fellowship at Stanford

At a Glance…

Born Christina Ama Ata Aidoo on March 23, 1942, in Abeadzi Kyiakor, Ghana; daughter of Nana Yaw Fama (a chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor) and Maame Abba Abasema; children: Kinna Likimani. Education: University of Ghana, B.A. (with honors), 1964; attended Stanford University.

Career: Writer, educator. University of Cape Coast, Ghana, lecturer in English, 1970-82; Phelps-Stokes Fund Ethnic Studies Program, Washington, D.C., consulting professor, 1974-75; Minister of Education, Ghana, 1982-83; University of Richmond, Virginia, writer-in-residence, 1989; chair, African Regional Panel of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, 1990, 1991; Mbaase, a non-profit organization that supports African women writers, founder and director.

Selected memberships: Zimbabwe Women Writers Association; Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA); Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI).

Awards: Short story prize from Mbari Press competition; prize from Black Orpheus for story, “No Sweetness Here;” Anowa listed one of the best African literary works of the 20th century by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair; research fellowship. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana; Fulbright scholarship, 1988; earned the Commonwealth Writers Prize for African writers for Changes: A Love Story, 1992.

Address: Home —P.O. Box 4930, Harare, Zimbabwe.

University in California, and traveled for two years before returning to Ghana to teach at the University of the Cape Coast and releasing her next play, Anowa, in 1970.

Anowa takes place in the late 19th century, when a strong-willed woman bucks tradition and refuses an arranged marriage, only to end up in misery with the man of her choosing, who becomes a slaveholder. In addition to again tackling the complex place of women in developing African culture, Anowa honestly examines the equally difficult history of slavery in Africa. In weaving historical fact into her story, Aidoo acknowledges the uncomfortable truth of Africa’s complicity in transatlantic slave trading. The play was listed as one of the best African literary works of the 20th century by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair.

In No Sweetness Here (1970), Aidoo’s first published collection of short stories, she explores further still both the complexities of gender in her culture and the conflict between rural and urban, traditional and modern influences that stress it. It is in these works, which she wrote in the 1960s, that Aidoo exhibits her comfortable knowledge of and affinity for African oral traditions in her use of tools such as African idioms. Aidoo first experimented with using poetry in the midst of prose in her dense 1977 novel, Our Sister Killjoy; or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint. The novel follows a young African woman who travels to Europe in the late 1960s. The journey brings into sharp focus the underdevelopment of the African culture she left behind, as well as a kind of racism she never felt there.

Wrote Poetry and Political Love Story

After a frustrating 18-month stint as Ghana’s minister of education, Aidoo left her homeland for Zimbabwe, where she taught and wrote poetry. She had taken her appointment to the ministry very seriously, believing that it was in her power to reform the Ghanaian school system, making an education available to all. She resigned after realizing that her dream was out of reach. During her time in Zimbabwe she composed enough poems to publish a collection, Someone Talking to Sometime, which was published in 1985, as well as a children’s book, The Eagle and the Chickens in 1986. She continues to teach in Zimbabwe and abroad. She lectures frequently and has taught in the United States at Hamilton College, Oberlin College, Brandeis University, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College.

Despite previous statements that there were too many serious political issues in Africa for her to ever consider writing a love story, Aidoo’s 1991 novel, Changes, is just that. In writing Changes, Aidoo later admitted she came to realize that “love or the workings of love is also political,” according to an online article at Africana.com. In Changes Aidoo examines the role of women in African society and around the world. The lead character, a Ghanaian woman named Esi, is punished by her husband for her independent ways and dedication to her job. They separate and Esi falls for a married man who makes her his second wife, an arrangement that would leave her free to work. Eventually, it is her second husband’s independence that wears on Esi. In writing the book, Aidoo employs several different formats; she again uses poetic notes throughout the text, and captures conversation in script form. Changes earned Aidoo the Commonwealth Writers Prize for African writers.

Aidoo published An Angry Letter in January, her second collection of poetry, in 1992, and another volume of short stories, The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, followed in 1997. She founded and is director of Mbaasa, a non-profit organization that subsidizes residencies for African women writers.

Selected writings

The Dilemma of a Ghost, (play; first produced in Legon, Ghana, at Open Air Theatre, March, 1964), Longmans, Green (London), 1965, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1971.

Anowa, (play; produced in London, 1991), Humanities Press (New York, NY), 1970.

No Sweetness Here, (stories), Longmans, Green (London), 1970; Doubleday (New York, NY), 1971.

Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint, (novel), Longman (London), 1977; NOK Publishing (New York, NY), 1979.

Dancing Out Doubts, NOK (Engu, Nigeria), 1982.

Someone Talking to Sometime, (poetry), College Press (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1985.

The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories, (for children), Tana Press (Engu, Nigeria), 1986.

Birds and Other Poems, (for children), College Press (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1987.

Changes: A Love Story, (novel), Women’s Press (London), 1991, Feminist Press at the City University of New York (New York, NY), 1993.

An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems, Dangaroo Press (Coventry, England), 1992.

The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, Sub-Saharan Publishers, 1997.

Also contributor to anthologies, including Modern African Stories, Faber, 1964; Black Orpheus: An Anthology of New African and Afro-American Stories, Longmans, 1964, McGraw-Hill, 1965; Pan African Short Stories, Thomas Nelson, 1966; New Sum of Poetry from the Negro World, Presence Africaine, 1966; African Writing Today, Penguin, 1967; African Writing Today, Manyland Books, 1969; Political Spider: An Anthology of Stories from ‘Black Orpheus,’ Africana Publishing, 1969; and African Literature and the Arts, Volume I, Crowell, 1970; and contributor of stories and poems to magazines, including Okyeame, Black Orpheus, Presence Africaine, Journal of African Literature, and New African.

Sources

Periodicals

Publishers Weekly, October 25, 1993, p. 56.

Research in African Literatures, Summer 2002.

Online

Africana.com, http://www.africana.com/Articles/tt_615.htm (December 23, 2002).

BBC World Service, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/aidoo_life.shtml (December 23, 2002).

Pegasos Literature-Related Resources, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aidoo.htm (December 23, 2002).

Post-colonial African Literatures in English, http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/AfrWomenWriters/Aidoo/Aidoo.html (December 23, 2002).

—Brenna Sanchez