Aidoo, Ama Ata

Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the most prominent African writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her works comprise plays, novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. She is recognized worldwide and has received many prizes and honorary distinctions. In Ghana, her country of origin, her books are part of the syllabus for secondary schools, and they are studied in many universities around the world. A number of late 20th and early 21st century women writers from the African continent acknowledge their debts toward her work and speak of her as their literary big sister, as did Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta, or mother, as does Ghanaian author Amma Darko. Like many other African authors, she is both a major writer and more than “just” a writer: she is also an activist, notably an acknowledged feminist, a dramatist, a teacher, and a craftswoman—this list is not exhaustive.

The Illiterate African Woman as Depicted in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa

Based on the theory of existentialism, this study seeks to find out Ama Ata Aidoo’s view on how illiteracy affects the African Woman in her drama, Anowa, which was published in 1970. The text depicts the illiterate woman as being powerful woman in African society. However, Ama Ata Aidoo posits that illiteracy makes the woman a pathetic individual who is not able to function effectively in this changing world. This study seeks to deepen the appreciation of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa, by contributing to the understanding of Aidoo’s attitude to the illiterate Ghanaian woman (and for that matter African woman) who is seen as a powerful matriarch, but frustrated by African society as a result of lack of formal education. The available literature was explored to find what other writers have said on Aidoo’s Anowa. We used the method of qualitative content analysis in our analysis. The findings of the study show that Ama Ata Aidoo uses her writing to satirize societal weaknesses for her readers to refrain from committing such wrongs. Her illiterate women characters in Anowa are bent on maintaining their traditions and are not prepared for change. Consequently, Aidoo uses the character, Anowa, to depict change in African societies.

Women’s Virtue: Engendering Shame

A focus on shame and the feminine, considering how female characters and shame are linked in order to address both explicitly female concerns as well as how those concerns can stand in for larger societal issues. The chapter revisits elements from Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu but concentrates much more on Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ, A River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, short stories by Ama Ata Aidoo, and Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie.

Quod erat demonstrandum: A comparative study of narrative technique in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes and Albert Camus’ Les justes (The Just Ones)

Authors of fictional works often have recourse to irony whereby they subtly indicate their disapproval of certain ideas or courses of action. Irony is a rather complex and wide-ranging phenomenon. However, in both Ama Ata Aidoo‟s Changes and Albert Camus Les justes, the authors resort to a specific form of irony to bring the discussion of issues raised to a conclusion. The technique consists in demonstrating clearly a huge discrepancy between a “fine” idea and its practical usefulness. This study, through textual analysis, aims to show how the two aforementioned authors successfully use this narrative technique. Albert Camus demonstrates the hollowness of the idea of fighting for justice through revolutionary violence and Ama Ata Aidoo similarly demonstrates the fatuousness of the theory of women- emancipation-through-polygamy.

Matrilineality and Mothers-in-Law in Ama Ata Aidoo’s “Something to talk about on the way to a funeral” and The Dilemma of a Ghost

In the play The Dilemma of a Ghost and the short story “Something to talk about on the way to a funeral”, Ama Ata Aidoo addresses her concern for the loss of matrilineal traditions in Akan communities. Her works portray mothers-in-law who cannot exert their matrilineal role of selecting their daughters-in-law; instead it is their sons – representatives of the patriarchal traditions acquired since the colonial times – the ones who choose a wife without their mothers’ consent or awareness. This article will examine these women’s attempt to deal with dominant strategies and how their role transforms into that of surrogate mothers who leave aside the rejection of the community and / or their sons towards their daughters-in-law and embrace them in order to promote their acceptance and thus be able to maintain the matrilineal society they belong to.

Europeanization of Ghanaian Names and Their Representations in Drama

In Ghanaian culture a name could tell the story of when a person is born, how the person is born or some special event at the time of their birth. However, difficulties in pronunciation, as well as misinterpretation of local names by the then colonial masters resulted in alterations of many local names to the convenience of the British and Portuguese, resulting in evolution of some local names over the years to new pronunciations and spellings. During colonial dominance and immediate post-colonial period, some renowned Ghanaian playwrights used names that reflect this confusion and consequently imbedded in their characters, traits that depicted such misrepresentations as well as the specific roles the playwright assigned them. This paper reflects on the character names in relation to the settings in selected Ghanaian plays and how these characters reveal Ghanaian naming philosophies in the ways these characters play their roles. The focus is on, but not limited to, playwrights such as Kobina Sekyi, Ama Ata Aidoo, J.C. deGraft and F.K. Fiawoo who seem to be enduring points of reference particularly when one appreciates the reasoning that informs how they craft their characters, courtesy the curiously noteworthy names they drape them in. The discussion is preceded by deliberations on the indigenous naming, names and their significance furthering on the colonial influence and attempts to Europeanize.

Ama Ata Aidoo’s Diagnose and Representation of the Dilemma of the African American Diaspora in her play Dilemma of A Ghost

The research investigates in details about the influence of cultural differences in Postcolonial Ghana as presented in Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost. The play centers on the cross cultural marriage of young couple; Ato Yawson, a Ghanaian who recently completed his studies in the United States and returns home, and Eulali, his African American bride. Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo expresses the consciousness of the diaspora of Ato Yawson and his wife and the final effort of Yawson’s mother to find a compromise. The husband is caught between the challenging demands of his wife and his family, He feels torn and irresolute as the folkloric ghost in the children's song in the play. Aidoo has a strong historical and political awareness of Africa's colonial past and post-colonial present, and the problems facing an African woman in Africa and outside it. She is like a physician, diagnoses the symptoms of the troubled postcolonial age in Africa. In her use of Dilemma tale technique, she raises difficult questions without easy solution leaving her readers to contemplate about. She calls for an action to resolve the painful dilemma of African life in a world of change where the past and present, tradition and modernity suffer a fierce conflict. The aim of the research is to prove that according to the concept of compensation there is neither absolute gain nor absolute loss for with every loss there is again and with every gain there is a loss. Without the concept of compromise the dilemma of diaspora will lead to catastrophic results.

THE RETURN OF THE BEEN-TO, THE BRINGER OF THE DIASPORA

Most male characters in the exile, analysed from a Post-Colonial perspective, were usually classified as either suffering from a neo-colonial process, and therefore rejecting tradition, or as keeping tradition and longing for going back to a patriarchal society. In this article, I aim to establish how Ama Ata Aidoo, in her play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1964), represents the feelings of unrootedness, loss and guilt associated to the main male character’s return to Africa. The use of the social and personal consequences that his comeback home to a matrilineal family has, will uncover the relation established between his family and his African American wife. In doing so, I will analyse how through an ‘insignificant’ song Aidoo tackles the controversial issue of the children of the diaspora and offers a solution to its rejection by the African population.