Ama Ata Aidoo

A celebration of the inspirational Ghanaian writer

Welcome to A Narrative of their Own, where I discuss the work of 20th century women writers and their relevance to contemporary culture.

Accra Central, Ghana

The death was announced at the beginning of June of Ghanaian playwright and novelist Ama Ata Aidoo, who also served as Education Minister for the country in the early 1980s.

Aidoo’s work centred on the lives of modern African women, rejecting what she saw as the West’s perception of the African woman as a ‘downtrodden wretch’.  As well as plays and novels, Aidoo also wrote short stories, children’s books, and poetry.

Aidoo was celebrated and championed by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who stated that Aidoo was a reader who should be much more widely read than she was.  She put the lack of knowledge of her work down to much of Aidoo’s writing being about the lives of women, and what that meant at a particular place and time. 

“I occupy the space of a ‘Black African Happy Feminist’ because writers like Ama Ata Aidoo came before me.  Her storytelling nurtured mine.  Her worldview enlarged and validated mine”. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Aidoo’s writing of women is witty, layered, and truthful; something Adichie feels often makes the tastemakers of literature uncomfortable.  Her first novel, published in 1977, Our Sister Killjoy is part-autobiographical and features a Ghanaian girl travelling through Europe.  Her later novel, written in 1992 Changes: A Love Story, won the Commonwealth writers’ prize for best African book.  She also wrote plays, including The Dilemma of a Ghost featuring a Ghanaian student returning home with his African American wife.

(For a reading of Aidoo’s short story ‘No Sweetness Here’ check out Adichie’s reading of the story, as well as a discussion on her choice).

No Sweetness Here & Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo

Born Christina Ama Aidoo into a Royal Fanti family in Ghana in 1942, Aidoo claimed her interest in telling stories began with both her own mother’s stories, and that of the professional storyteller who inhabited her village.  She stated that once she became aware of herself, she decided that she should perhaps add to the world’s stories, and began to write.

Attending a girls’ school in Cape Coast in the early 60s, Aidoo decided she wanted to be a poet, a profession her headmistress pointed out ‘doesn’t feed anyone’.  She did however provide Aidoo with an Olivetti typewriter to encourage her writing.  Shortly following this, and at age 18, Aidoo’s interest in buying a pair of pink shoes she coveted in a shop window led to her entering a short story competition in a local newspaper, which she won.  (I love the fact that wanting to buy shoes led to her writing the story!).

Enrolling in the University of Ghana in 1964, Aidoo found what she referred to as her “writer self” and acknowledged that she couldn’t write stories that sounded like an English girl, so instead, set out to write “as authentically African as possible”.  Her first play The Dilemma of a Ghost was written at this time, going on to be the first published play by an African woman dramatist.

Writing her first novel in 1977 Our Sister Killjoy, inspired by her own travels to London, Aidoo stated that she wanted to squash the idealistic African notion of the West at the time.  Her protagonist Sissie is disappointed by London and Germany, as well as confused by the sexual advances of her friend.  Aidoo stated later that she had been attacked, at one time or another, by both conservative Ghanaians for writing about same-sex relationships, and by lesbians for not exploring them more.

Interestingly, despite her successful and prolific writing career, Aidoo was well aware of the challenge of balancing writing with mothering, as well as the need to earn a steady income.  She reflects on these issues in her short story ‘Choosing – a Moral from the World of Work’, which featured in her collection The Girl Who Can and Other Stories.

“Once upon a time, there was a writer who couldn’t write because she thought she had too many problems. The main one being financial. So one day, she decided she would go and do other things from which she could make money more quickly. That way, she would be able to solve her problems, since half of them had to do with the fact that she never had enough money to solve her problems.”

From ‘Choosing – a Moral from the World of Work’.

Aidoo herself spent much of her working life in academia in order to pay the bills, including positions in both the University of Ghana and several universities in the US, including Brown.

In 1982, she became the first woman to be made Education Minister in the Ghanaian government, helping to earn greater respect for female teachers.  Aidoo subsequently resigned however from this post after eighteen months due to frustration at being unable to make education free, as well as the need to commit more to her writing.

Her writing is unashamedly feminist and often features women – mothers and daughters in particular - likely related to the fact that she got the idea for her first play from her mother and is herself a mother of a daughter.  Though she often portrays mothers as sources of wisdom, Aidoo’s books also challenge the all-caring stereotype of motherhood, including storylines of abandonment.  She has faced criticism for the portrayal of Esi, a character in Changes: A Love Story as she leaves her child behind, though, as Aidoo pointed out, the criticism came from readers in the West, not from African women.

Aidoo had stated that her own decision to have only one child stemmed from her belief that she was not a very practical mother, believing she struggled to give her daughter enough attention.  She believed therefore that having more children would be out of the question for her.  Dividing her time between teaching, motherhood, and writing, meant that she openly admitted that she needed a lot of both paid help and that of extended family. 

In 2000, Aidoo established a foundation aimed at promoting the writing of African women called ‘Mbaasem’ (women’s words) Though this later struggled financially, Aidoo declared that the main challenges for African women’s writing were the time to write and a room of their own - a familiar theme to regular readers of this newsletter!