Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on 23rd March, 1942[6] inAbeadzi Kyiakor, nearSaltpond, in theCentral Region of Ghana. She was initially called Christiana Ama Aidoo.[7] Some sources ([8] including Megan Behrent,Brown University, andAfrica Who's Who) have stated that she was born on 31st March.[9][10] She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata.[11][12]
Aidoo was raised in aFante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief ofAbeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema.[13] Her grandfather was murdered byneocolonialists,[14][15] which brought her father's attention to the importance of educating the children and families of the village on the history and events of the era. This led him to open up the first school in their village and influenced Aidoo to attendWesley Girls' High School, where she first decided she wanted to be awriter.[16]
Aidoo later credited her years at Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast with nurturing her early interest in literature.[17]
Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under theProvisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months, realizing that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education inGhana freely accessible to all.[22] She has portrayed the role of African women in contemporary society. She has opined that the idea ofnationalism has been deployed by recent leaders as a means of keeping people oppressed.[23] She criticized those literate Africans who profess to love their country but are seduced by the benefits of the developed world.[24] She believed in a distinct African identity, which she viewed from a female perspective.[25] She held strong Pan-Africanist views on the necessity of unity among African countries and was outspoken about the centuries of exploitation of the Africa's resources and peoples.[26][27]
In 1983, she moved to live inZimbabwe, where she continued her work in education, including as a curriculum developer for the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education, as well as writing.[28] While inHarare, she published a collection of poems in 1985,Someone Talking to Sometime, and wrote a children's book entitledThe Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories (1986).[29]
AtYari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue, the symposium of African writers held in Accra, Ghana, in 2013, Aidoo was a plenary speaker, alongsideAngela Davis and others.[38]
Her works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African worldviews. Her first novel,Our Sister Killjoy, was published in 1977 and remains one of her most popular works. It is notable for portraying a dissenting perspective onsexuality in Africa, and especiallyLGBT in Africa. Whereas one popular idea on the continent is that homosexuality is alien to Africa and an intrusion of ideas ofWestern culture into a pure, inherently heterosexual "African" culture, Aidoo portrays the main character ofKilljoy as indulging inlesbian fantasies of her own, and maintaining sympathetic relationships with lesbian characters.[40]
Many of Aidoo's other protagonists are also women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time, as in her playAnowa. Her novelChanges: A Love Story won the 1992Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa).[41] She was also an accomplished poet—her collectionSomeone Talking to Sometime won theNelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987[42]—and the author of severalchildren's books.
In 2000, Aidoo founded theMbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission "to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output",[5] which she ran together with her daughter Kinna Likimani[45] and a board of management.[46]
Aidoo died on 31 May 2023 inAccra.[51][52][53][54][55] Praising her as "an outstanding writer, advocate for women's cause, the cause of Africans and the progressive people around the world", PresidentNana Akufo-Addo announced that she would be given a state funeral,[56][57] with rites held from 13 July to 16 July,[58][59][60] On 13 July, her funeral took place in the forecourt of the State House,[61] followed by lying-in-state at her home town of Abeadze Kyiakor on 15 July, and a thanksgiving church service and burial on Sunday, 16 July.[62][63]
According to a tribute from theCaine Prize council, Aidoo had been working on a new novel for some years before her death.[64]
Aidoo received several awards throughout her career, including winning theMbari Club prize in 1962 for her short story "No Sweetness Here",[28] and the 1992Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa) for her novelChanges.[65]
The Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, awarded by the Women's Caucus of the African Studies Association for an outstanding book published by a woman that prioritizes African women's experiences, is named in honour of Ama Ata Aidoo and ofMargaret C. Snyder, who was the founding director ofUNIFEM.[72]
Launched in March 2017, the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing (Aidoo Centre), under the auspices of the Kojo Yankah School of Communications Studies at theAfrican University College of Communications (AUCC) inAdabraka, Accra, was named in her honour[74]—the first centre of its kind in West Africa, withNii Ayikwei Parkes as its director.[75][76]
^Uwechue, Raph (1996).Africa Who's Who. London: Africa Books Limited. pp. 80–81.ISBN9780798303446.
^Odamtten, Vincent Okpoti (26 April 2000). "'For Her Own (Works') Quality' The Poetry of Ama Ata Aidoo".Matatu.21–22 (1):209–216.doi:10.1163/18757421-90000320.
^Liukkonen, Petri."Ama Ata Aidoo".Books and Writers (Authors Calendar). Finland.Archived from the original on 25 March 2018. Retrieved12 May 2018.
^"Ama Ata Aidoo".Casa África. 10 February 2017.Archived from the original on 29 April 2023. Retrieved29 April 2023.
^Jagne, Siga Fatima; Pushpa Naidu Parekh, eds. (1998)."Ama Ata Aidoo (1942–)".Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Routledge. p. 32.ISBN9781136593970.Archived from the original on 2 June 2024. Retrieved3 May 2021.
^Epprecht, Marc (2006)."Ama Ata Aidoo". In Gerstner, David A. (ed.).Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture (1 ed.).Routledge. p. 17.ISBN9780415306515.Archived from the original on 1 May 2023. Retrieved5 July 2022.
^Aidoo, Ama (11 June 2019)."Poems".Kunapipi.14 (1).ISSN0106-5734.Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. Retrieved1 June 2023.
^Simpson, Waleska Saltori."'What Fashion of Loving Was She Ever Going to Consider Adequate?' Subverting the 'Love Story' in Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes".English in Africa, 34.1 (2007): 155–71. Print.
Adams, Anne V. (editor),Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70: A Reader in African Cultural Studies, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK: Ayebia Clake Publishing, 2012,ISBN9780956930705.
Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka and G. Wilentz,Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo, Africa Research & Publications, 1999.
Deandrea, Pietro,Fertile Crossings: Metamorphoses of Genre in Anglophone West African Literature. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. 16–22, isbn 9789042014787.
George, Rosemary Marangoly, and Helen Scott, "A New Tail to an Old Tale": An Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo",Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 26, No. 3, African Literature Issue (Spring 1993), pp. 297–308.JSTOR,https://doi.org/10.2307/1345838.
Misra, Aditya, "Death in Surprise: Gender and Power Dynamics in Ama Ata Aidoo's Anowa".Journal of Drama Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2012, pp. 81–91.
Odamtten, Vincent O.,The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading Against Neocolonialism. University Press of Florida, 1994.
Pujolràs-Noguer, Esther,An African (Auto)biography. Ama Ata Aidoo's Literary Quest: Strangeness, Nation and Tradition, Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012.
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