Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on March 23, 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, a Fanti-speaking village in the central region of Ghana, and died at her home in the early hours of Wednesday May 31, after a brief illness. She died surrounded by her family, at the age of 81 and after several decades of cultural, educational and social activism.
An academic, feminist activist and renowned author of essays, novels, poetry, children’s stories and drama, Aidoo was, according to her compatriot and fellow academic Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, “a critical voice in African feminist politics”. Mohammed also reports that she served as a beacon for many young people; she showed them that “Africans could and should tell our own stories on our own terms.” “Her feminist politics of hers was not only based on African knowledge systems, but she also critically questioned the ways in which colonization and imperialism shaped and continue to shape the condition of Africans around the world,” she points out for email.
Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the most significant African writers of the last two centuries. Her obituary on the BBC stressed that her work is read in schools across West Africa, along with the likes of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. She also became a key influence on writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who confessed to being dazzled by her portrayal of complex African femininity. Her influence reaches African cultural idols of today, such as Burna Boy, a Nigerian Afrobeats superstar who includes one of her quotes on neocolonialism in the 2020 song Monsters You Made (the monsters you made): Since we met them / 500 years ago. / Look at us, we have given everything. / You keep drinking. / In exchange for that, we get nothing. / Nothing. / And you know it. / But don’t you think this is over? / Finished where? / It’s over?
Her feminist politics was not only grounded in African knowledge systems, but also critically questioned the ways in which colonization and imperialism shaped and continue to shape the condition of Africans around the world.
Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, academic
Aidoo’s literature began to take shape during his university days, in Ghana, in 1964, and described the dilemmas of modern African women, the cognitive dissonances that mark the life projects of Western-educated Africans, and the influence of colonization on their continent. . She first published in 1965, with Longman Press, and did so with a play, The Dilemma Of A Ghost (A Ghost’s Dilemma), which portrays the hardships of a Ghanaian student returning to his country, thus becoming the first published African female playwright.
His career is marked by milestones: the Commonwealth Award for Best African Book in 1992 for his novel changes (1991); the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987 for his collection Someone Talking To Sometimes (someone speaking at some point) or her work as Minister of Culture of Ghana (1983). She once again led the way, by becoming the first woman to hold the position, appointed by the Provisional Council for National Defense, and she resigned after 18 months of office, unable to achieve the progress that she advocated.
Ama Ata Aidoo has always been fiercely opposed to the Western perception of the African as “a wretch, oppressed” and is famous for her phrase “Africans were feminists before feminism.” In her career, she highlights her passionate commitment to other authors, as executive director of Mbaasen, an organization she founded herself, in which she collaborated with her only daughter, Kinna Likimani, and which works to make women visible. African authors.
“Ama Ata Aidoo was talking about feminism in Africa before it became fashionable,” says Nigerian writer, editor and feminist Lola Shoneyin in a private message on Twitter, where she publicly shared images of both, expressing her grief over the loss of her mentor and friend. “She was always telling us about the impact of colonialism and how important it is for women to ‘take ourselves seriously.’ We are very proud of her work and her legacy.”
Ama Ata Aidoo always fiercely opposed the Western perception of the African as “a wretch, oppressed”
his short novel Our killjoy sister, originally published in 1977, is the only text available in Spanish. The translation corresponds to the expert Marta Sofía López, who also prefaces it by stating that “Aidoo breaks our certainties, undermines our complacency, undermines our excuses”. And she adds: “The fundamental thing is that his embrace of literary strategies closer to orality allows us to recover the ‘independent, strong and admirable African women, celebrated in our oral traditions’.”
Aidoo’s biographies always review the enormous influence exerted on her by her father, Nana Yaw Fama, a member of a royal family and chief of the village where she was born. British neocolonialism ended the life of her grandfather, an event that convinced her father of the need to educate the community and understand history, inspiring him to open the first school in the town. He encouraged her to study at Wesley High School for Ladies in Cape Coast between 1961 and 1964, before she completed her BA in English at the University of Ghana.
Aidoo inherited her passion for stories from her mother, Maame Abasema, and at the age of 15 she decided she wanted to be a writer. At 19, she obtained a creative writing scholarship at the prestigious Californian Stanford University. When she returned to Ghana, she dedicated herself to teaching in Cape Coast (1970-1982), but in 1983, after her frustrated ministerial experience, she moved to live in Zimbabwe, where she devoted herself to teaching and teaching. writing.
She received a Fulbright scholarship in 1988, was a writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond (United States) in 1989, and taught several English courses at Hamilton College in Clinton (New York) in the early 1990s. . She served as a visiting professor in the Department of African Studies at Brown University, also in the United States, for seven years and until 2011, she also spent seasons in Germany, Kenya and England. Her plays have been performed at Legon, Pittsburgh, London, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a fundamental piece of anthologies like Sisterhood Is Global (Sorority Is Worldwide), edited by Robin Morgan in 1984, or Daughters Of Africa (Daughters of Africa), from the publisher Margaret Busby (1992).
She herself edited the anthology African Love Stories (2006), which means African love stories, in which the cream of contemporary African women’s literature participates, and launched, in 2012, Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories, No Sweetness Here and The girl who can (part of the Heinemann series of African writers). His poems can be found under titles like After The Ceremonies. He was a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature, created in 2013 as a platform for African-authored fiction debuts. They dedicated a documentary to him, The Art Of Ama Ata Aidooby Yaba Badoe (2014) and a collection of essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, edited by Anne V. Adams.
“The literary and intellectual work of Ama Ata Aidoo and her life are for me the quintessence of defending feminist ideals,” says Senegalese academic and activist Rama Salla Dieng, now at the Center for African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. “Not only is her literary work filled with inspiring and multidimensional female characters who find themselves at a pivotal moment in her life, but she also lived her professional life adhering to feminist ideals.
According to Dieng, Aidoo was able to capture the dilemmas of her characters’ individual and social transformation and was, herself, as multifaceted and multidimensional as they were. She also highlights her deep commitment to inclusive and progressive social change and popular education, and a rich and lasting legacy to be nurtured and preserved by African feminists.
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