AMAATAAIDOO: AN INTRODUCTION

Madhumita Chakraborty

'As Always... a Painful Declaration of Independence

I have been happy
being me:
an African
a woman
and a writer.

Just take your racism

your sexism
your pragmatism
off me;

overt
covert or
Internalised
And
damned you! ' _
'An Angry letter in January' -Arna Ata Aidoo

LIFE
AmaAtaAidoo, Ghana's leading female writer was bom on 23 M:arch
1942 ~t Abeadze Kyiakor, a small village in Ghana's central Fanti- .
speaking region. Her Christian name was Christina Arna Aido. She
Was the daughter of the Chief of the Abeadzi Kyiakor tribe, Nana Ya~·
 13.2 I Post Colonial Literature . V, .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - --.:__s. oices fr
.
Fama, and Maame Abasema, and therefore had · , 'her
· · H c. h h d
up brmgmg. er 1at er a opened the first scho 1. a relative1 ,
YPriv·i
. . fl o in the.1 I eg
he was a big m uence on her. She attended th ,1 , . r Villag ed
· e vvesle a· e, and
School m Cape Coast, and the headmistress of ti Y iris• If
first typewriter. Even while she was in school, by; school bought ~gb
had decided that she wanted to be a writer. She l e age of 15,A.id er
:; Was enc oo
enter a newspaper short story competition, which sh , ouraged 1
1
had won, once she saw her name in the newspape.r. Ae~e~rnt that sh~
i oo says•
...at the age of I 5, a teacher had asked me what I wanted t d ·
6
and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wa:te~ t~ r acareer,
ie!
I
' I

About four years later I won a short story competition. but be aPoet.
it only when I opened the newspaper that had organised 't rned about
''' story had been published on its centre pages and realised t~' and saw the
I l'
I ·' r
author ofth at story m . . .
prmt was mme. b . ' ,
I eheve thes'e moments·
e name ofth
e
i 1·. ·I . Were cruc· 1
for me because ... I had articulated a dream ... it was a majbr affi . ta
• 1 ,
I, [ '
' ·. · rmatton for
11 i• 1• • • • I
I ' me as a wnter, to see my name m pnnt
1
l"1
I

1 ·~r~
I

After leaving high school, she enrolled at th~

.

Uf
' I '

versity ofGh ..
I •

1
Legon and received her Bachelor of Arts in Englisµ. It ivas also anha_in
. . h h ll. ,, ,. , w tie
\ she was at the ·Umvers1ty t at s e wrote 11er,first,play, The Dile

I I
It!
ii ofa Ghost, in 1964. With the publication of thJ play the following;:
Aidoo had not only achieved her childhood ambition, hut also becam~
the first published African woman dramatist. ·setwe~n 1964 and 1966
she was a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies.
This fellowship strengthened her commitment to the use of African
oral traditions in her work and was a major s,ource of inspiration. She
was also undoubtedly influenced by the ·pan-Afric~nist and socialist
ideas that were prevalent in the 1950s anct160s in the period leading up
to and immediately after the independen~ of Ghana in 1957.2
In her career, Aidoo has worked in a number of c~untries as _well _as
Ghana, before eventually rising to become a Professor at the University
of Cape Coast in Ghana: In addition, she also 's~i-ved a stint in t~e
political arena when she was appointed·as Mi1,1ister of Education in
Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration. S$e resigned her P0st
after I8 months. She currently lives ip Ghana, \vhere in 2000 sh:
I
established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and st1pport thew~r
I\ j} of African women writers. Aidoo is also a p~tron of the Etisalat pnze
. I

l~
i
 ,4,r1a ,41a Aidoo:
-- An
. _Introduction I 13.3
________________ _

cr~at~d in 2013 as a platform for debut books for African

{of i..,I •
fiction wnters.

WRITINGS
[l]t is especially pat~etic to keep ~n writing_without havin~ any consistent,
r1ive, critical intelligence that 1s mterested myou as an art!St.. .. Therefore,
~r: precisely from this point that African writing women's reality begins
It IS
differ somewhat from that of the male African writer. Once we have
~aced the basic fact of the oppression and marginality that is almost
0

endemic in the lives of. ..Africans, we also begin to admit that at least,
some people are interested in the male African writer. These include African,
non-African, male and female literary critics, different catego·ries of
·publishers, editors, anthologists, translators, librarians, sundry academic
3
. pllalysts, and all other zealous collectors of treasures!
· Aidoo's writing reflects the breadth of her career and has certainly
been influenced by the historical events which have shaped her life and
her country. Aidoo's intervention in many of the debates surrounding
African literature and particularly African women's literature has been
extremely importa_nt, particularly in her insistence that the struggle for
women's liberation must not be subordinated to nationalist or anti-4
imperialist struggles, but rather must be an intrinsic part of the same.
Today,AmaAtaAidoo has secured a place for herselfin the Ghanaian
literary canon. She is known internationally, not only as a modem day
creative African writer but also as an outspoken spokesperson for
womens rights. She is a playwright, poet, novelist, short story writer,
and critic. Hers is the voice of conscience and protest, exposing the
social ills of post independence Ghanaian society, especially in its
treatment of women. 5 She says:
In so many great literatures ofthe world, women are nearly always around
to service the great male heroes. Since I am a woman it is natural that i not
only write about women but with women in more central roles, the story
6
which is being told is normally about women ...
Throughout her career, she has chronicled the universal y~t unique
: :~ggl~s of women as they seek independence, identity and recognition .
°
• 1 0 is an extremely versatile writer, her published dramatic works
inc1ude Th e D1·temma of a Ghost ( 1965), written when she was in
COIi
ege and Anowa ( 1970), while her short-story collections are titled

II
 13.4 I Post Colonial Literatures· .
- - - - - - - - - - - . . . - - - - -::__· Voices I:...
irorn the ,
No Sweetness Here ( 1970) and The Girl Wh C Other ,
. o ana d
( 1996). Her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy ( 197?). n Othe,.
a verse-prose style. Changes ( 1992), is essentiall Isla fiction Wr~10"ies
.
Atdoo has been on record earlier.
stating that yha ove story, aitbitten .1n
about lovers. Aidoo's poetry collections includs could never ou~
·
Sometime ( 1985) and An Angry Letter. in·Janu e meone l'alkinWrite
00

ary ( 1992) gto

works for young adults are The Eagle and the Ch. , While h
Stories ( 1989) and Birds and Other Poems o989 ) ickens and 0th er
. er
The variety of her writing genres points tow d .
·1· d I A"d ar s her i
v~rsatt 1ty an ta_ e~t. 1 oo analyzes ~he_Place of the indiv• lll~ense
lustory of colomaltsm and neo-colomalism in Africa tduaJ in the
nd
African feminist she also takes into account the oppre' ~ as a black
. . . ss1on of md
Afncan women m two of her mostwell-known essays: 'N em
and 'To Be an African Woman Writer-Overview and De~a~l~viours'
latter essay, today regarded as a seminal piece of work, Aido · In the
, ocomme ts
on the near total absence of women from the African literary field. °
states: 8he
In March of-I 985, Professor Dieter Riemenschneider came to Har
give a lecture on some regional approach to African lit~~re. The,:~!~
lasted at least two hours. In all that time Professor Riemenschneider did
not find it possible to mention a single African woman writer. When this
I ' was pointe9 out. to him later, he said he was sorry, but it had been 'so
natural.' l ~ouJd have died. It had been so natural to forget that .quite abit
of modern African literature was produced by women? Why should it be
'natural' to forget that some African women had been writing and
publishing for as long as so~e African male writers? 7
The case of African women writers is certainly not unique in the
world, but in many ways, the experiences of these women are certainly
different from the rest ofthe world. Like their male counterparts,African
women writers have Iiteral ly held a pen in 011e hand and a swor? in ~e
other. They have been equal participants in the decolontsation
movement, and equally critical of the pohc1es . . adopted by the fripost·an
independence Governments. Yet, it is not uncommon to see A ; to
women's writing, especially in the 1950's and 1960's releg~te and
I' 'special ·issue' journals, or worse still, condescending, res;nn!eted
\ ·\ disorganised-the same second-class treatment that is mo st O en
I
 ·J 0
. An Introduction I 13.5
/0 Al O-·- ------------':------..:_-
Afrl0 A i
en in the society. The first book-lengtQ treatment ofAfrican
out_ n eus~~~palmer 's.An introductwn
to wom · to ·(he;;I.fr.1can
· · Novel, refers
1

fictt 0 ' e to a woman writer-a reference to Fl~ta Nwapa that labels

oo ty, one. ferior noveltst vvomen authors are .aIso,qotably
. , .8 nr ' absent from
be r an in I Ac. . 1·
ondary matena on 1ncan iterature and the growth of the
.

0
ther sec .
. the continent, particularly . the l 950's and 1960's, although
m
noveh1in changed significantly since then. In many interviews, Aidoo
th at ~ken eloquently and evocatively of the.make-up of traditional
has .spt'es as keepers of a umque . way of 11"tie. For .instance, she says:
socte t ' .
think that we are lookin~ ~t a soc~ety which, by.and ·Jarg~, h_as been in a
1ocess of collapse and d1smtegrat1on, as a result of colomal mtervention
some time. That is, if we are looking at it in terms of very original
traditional structures. But, you see, I think that societies, even our own,
are dynamic in their own way.... I suspect grandparents would be there.
But the choice is ours entirely to make, whether we let the present process,
which more or less sidelines grandmothers; continue or whether we do
something to stop this disintegration. And I think that _to a certain extent,
we can intervene. We don't have to simply let everything collapse .... But,
the kind of energy that we need to intervene in the disintegratioJ\ ofthe
role of the grandmother as we know it is the same kind of energy we need
•to reorganize other areas of our lite. Like making the education system
9
more meaningful, and so on and so forth.

THE GIRL WHO CAN

'
Thesame idea was replicated in a number of works of Aidoo, including
her novels and short stories. The Girl Who Can and other stories
wasAidoo's second collection of short stories. The collection contains
eleven short stories - from the anecdotal to the political and the
~hilosophical. Seven had been previously published in magazines and
Journals between 1974 and 1995. The stories are mostly ruminations on
various subjects concerning African society, but also with an universal
appeal -the merging of Old World wisdom with the modem, the value
oftrad'f
1 ion, woman-to-woman dynamics . frustrated and realized
• dreams
· examine, generally, the issues of woma'nhood and being a woman in a
modem ' maIe-dom .mated post mdependence
. . worl dIO
African
 <
_ I _ _ _ _ _ _Post
13.6_ _ Colonial
_ _ _Literatures· Vt ~.~c,es from the ·,
_ __ ·__:,_O'
Other'
Like many short story collections, there is an
'ti h . coII ectJon.
. Tl1e md1vidual
· ·
gmres t e ent1re stories inoverall
ti th erne that
.tJ . . I . . le collect·1
w, 11 va~1~~s issues p agumg post_mdependence Africa. Mo ~n deaJ
has not ~ought about a sense of liberation or emanci· t· dern1sation
' ' ~~fu
they still continue to be regarded as second class ci·t· . rwomen
1zens lil th . ,
country. The collection can be largely grouped into four eir own
first segment, consists of the stories: 'Lice,' 'Payments , ~::en~s. The
'Choosing' and 'Newly Opened Doors'; and focus on,th pansons,'
. eproblern
the contemporary African women, as they straddle the ft sof
colonialism, gender hierarchies, cultural sexism and otha errna of th
er proble
and yet remain undaunted and continue to attempt to tran ms,
1 scend the·
I, social problems and contribute meaningfully towards the suste tr
I r
thetr. f:am,·1·1es, and the deve- Iopment ofth elf. communities and thenanceof .
' I It is through the survival of such families that a new genera~~ciety,
. . b . h . on of
women ach1evers 1s om - mt e protagomsts of 'The Girl Who C ,
'Heavy Moments' and 'She-Who-Would-Be-King'. These stories m:~e
up the second segment. The woman protagonists of these stories will
emerge as the bedrock of their families, lead to a change in societal
outlook and will ultimately become the pivot on which the larger society
and her communit)' are hinged. The stories in the second segment
contai~s stories of triumph and unprecedented achievements, where
the female protagonists or characters emerge as rivals of men in their,
hitherto, exclusive fields of endeavour, like Adjoa the best junior athlete,
and Akuba the first femat'e pilot in her county's Air Force Academy.
Each protagonist overcoines patriarchal gender myths, retrogressive
and inhibitive cultural norms about women, as she clings to her zeal and
determination to achieve her goal. The central character of the title
story, 'The Girl Who Can,' Adjoa, has always been criticised by her
grandmother for her thin legs. Yet she uses this very criticism to motivate
herself and uses her thin legs, prejudiced against by her grandmother,
based on indigenous traditional gender myths, to run and win the trophy
of the best junior athlete. This brings fame to her and her school, and
pride to her family, and especially to her grandmother. The third segment
is comprised of stories of female protagonists who do not onlye~er~e
as rivals of men in their fields of endeavour but also as leaders in~ e
decolonization of the mental ity of their African people. Su_ch 5ron::
include: 'Her Hair Politics,' 'Some Global News,' and 'Male- ing Nam

d
 Aidoo: An Introduction I 13.7
Arna Ata '- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ -
. th sun.' The fourth segment made up of the next set of three short
in ·es 'Nowhere Cool,' 'Nutty' and 'About the Wedding Feast'
stone
advocates ,. bond .mg _among all women of the world, in order that they
fonn a !!reat sisterhood through the tolerance of one another's
can 1 as m
frican cultµre . 'About the Wedd'mg Feast,' and through racial
~\eran,ce as 1ip 'Nutty' and '~owhere Cool,'. in order that wot,en can
11
. •nt\yresist and combat patriarchal oppression globally.
JOI
Stories like 'Payments' in the collection deal with issues of economic
1 ,

disparity in t~1is new world, where women become enemies of each

other, and eon~equently, women who are better off economically ill
treat those less fortunate than themselves. The situation is of course
not dissimilar to what we encounter every day in post independence
India. In the title story, 'The Girl Who Can,' Adjoa's grandmother, Nana,
attempts to propagate the fallacious gender myth that any girl-child
who does not have big strong legs or who has thin long legs like Adjoa
cannot have babies because thin legs cannot support solid hips that can
a
support pregnancy. This is eventually proved wrong by Adjoa. An ofher
bone of contention in the family is whether or not Adjoa should'•be
allowed to go to school. Owing to Nana's prejudice, Adjoa is initially
allow~d to go to school as a happy riddance because her legs are
suppo~edly of no use for childbearing. In the end, Adjoa turns out to
become the best all-round junior athlete who wins the trophy. The irony
is that her grandmother Nana gets so proud of her that throughout the
sports week, she accompanies the pupils to school to watch Adjoa
during the competition, and keeps admiring Adjoa's legs silently. It is"
Nana who eventually brings home the cup and shows it to Adjoa's
1
mother before returning it to the headmaster. ~
The entire collection is of credible and inspirational stories, not of
th e rich and famous, or the privileged few .in society, but of actual
characters that one encounters in their everyday lives. Unlike in Aidoo 's
earlier shoet story collection No Sweetness Here, in the collection The
Girl who Can the focus is on the urban world. And yet, the two
~llections are joined together. The women in No Sweetness Here
docussed on the traditional roles for women of motherhood family, as
omany of the women protagonists in the first segment. Yet, it is in the
cpharacte
. rs th at she creates in• the subsequent segments - ·the first ever
resident of the Confederation of African States to be a woman - the
 I _ _ _ _ _ _Post
J3.8_
_ _ _Colonial
___ literatures:
_ _ ___ Voi ces,,omMe'
r..
Otl,er,
daughter of the protagonist of that short story or the fi · ----
. . . . irst ever fi
pilot m the Air Force after overcommg many challenges ·. emaJe
including an attemoted sexual violation in the city by /s a girl-child
.d h er step f: th '
her mother's hus ban or event e protagonist of 'The Girl W • a er,
who take the next step forward and are the harbingers of ho Can'
order. Grace Okereke states: a new World
The image of woman bearing her burdens in conformityw·th . .
which is obvious in their early novels [read short stories] tradition
. f d . . "ffi 'gives Wayt0
the image o woman a optmg d1 erent strategies for survival d . .
for self-assertion against the tidal wave of patriarchal d: ~ving
woman in their later works. 13 · mition of
What also makes the collection stand apart is Aidoo's Jang
. "d , conversat1ona
v1v1 . I, anecdotaI an d contextual - and filled with cultu
uage -
specific references and . . expressions. This gives an authentic vo·icere-
to
her characters. In add1t1on, through her language, Aidoo is also able t ·
poke fun at the colonial enterprise, for instance in the ludicrousness 0~
an entire town_'s populace: se~ing about 'the b~siness ofEuropeanizing
themselves with panache with the men wearmg 'three-piece woollen
suits, complete with top hats' and the women wearing long evening
gowns, hats, stockings, and gloves in eighty-eight-degree sun 14, or even
in a situation where women turn enemies of each other, with the more
privileged treating the not-so-privileged with scorn and disdain. Overall,
like most women writers across the African continent, Aidoo articulates
f
the issues and concerns of women, and envisions a new world order,
not just of complementarities, as Bessie Head does, but a world, where
I . women are able to use their talents and courage to create a new
11
1 beginning for women. Her writings exude an attitude of positivity, not
,, i~
Iimited to women alone. Rather, Aidoo "attempts to stripe Africans of a
colonial mentality and the beliefthat nothing good can come from Africa.
i Instead, she envisions a positive or conducive climate, fertile vegetation,
and better government led by women, not only for Adjoa, the eponym~us
j "girl who can" or the protagonist's place of birth, but also for the entire
African continent." 15 Ultimately, as Aidoo states:
i In so many great literatures of the world, women are nearly al~a~s15
around to service the great male heroes. Since I am a woman ,t
natural that I not only write about women but with women in mo~:
central-roles, the story which is being told is nonnally about women..,