Ama Ata Aidoo

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ama Ata Aidoo
Commonwealth Writers' Prize

1992

Ama Ata Aidoo (23 March 1942 – 31 May 2023)

Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.[5]

Early life

Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on 23 March 1942

Central Region of Ghana. Some sources ([7]including Megan Behrent, Brown University, and Africa Who's Who) have stated that she was born on 31 March.[8][9] She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata.[10][11]

Aidoo was raised in a

Wesley Girls' High School, where she first decided she wanted to be a writer.[15]

Education

From 1957, Aidoo attended Wesley Girls' Senior High School in Cape Coast.[16][17] After high school, she enrolled in 1961 at the University of Ghana, Legon, where she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English and wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964.[2] The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist.[4]

Career

After graduating, Aidoo held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University in California[2] before returning to Ghana in 1969 to teach English at the University of Ghana.[18] She served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies there and as a lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, where she eventually rose to the position of professor.[19]

Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months, realizing that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all.[20] She has portrayed the role of African women in contemporary society. She has opined that the idea of nationalism has been deployed by recent leaders as a means of keeping people oppressed.[21] She criticized those literate Africans who profess to love their country but are seduced by the benefits of the developed world.[22] She believed in a distinct African identity, which she viewed from a female perspective.[23] 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.[24][25]

In 1983, she moved to live in Zimbabwe, where she continued her work in education, including as a curriculum developer for the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education, as well as writing.[26] While in Harare, she published a collection of poems in 1985, Someone Talking to Sometime, and wrote a children's book entitled The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories (1986).[27]

In

Bogle-L'Ouverture publishing house.[28]

Aidoo received a

Hamilton College in Clinton New York
in the early mid-1990s.

In 1991, she and African-American poet

Tess Onwueme, Coumba Touré, Maryse Condé, Nancy Morejón, and Sapphire.[30]

From 2004 to 2011, Aidoo was a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University.[31]

She chaired the Ghana Association of Writers Book Festival from its inception in 2011.[32][33]

Aidoo was a patron of the

Etisalat Prize for Literature (alongside Dele Olojede, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Margaret Busby, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, and Zakes Mda), created in 2013 as a platform for African writers of debut novels of fiction.[34][35]

Writings

Aidoo's plays include The Dilemma of a Ghost, produced at Legon in 1964 (first published in 1965) and Pittsburgh in 1988, and Anowa, published in 1971 and produced at the Gate Theatre in London in 1991.[26][36]

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 on sexuality in Africa, and especially LGBT in Africa. Whereas one popular idea on the continent is that homosexuality is alien to Africa and an intrusion of ideas of Western culture into a pure, inherently heterosexual "African" culture, Aidoo portrays the main character of Killjoy as indulging in lesbian fantasies of her own, and maintaining sympathetic relationships with lesbian characters.[37]

Many of Aidoo's other protagonists are also women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time, as in her play Anowa. Her novel

Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa).[38] She was also an accomplished poet—her collection Someone Talking to Sometime won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987[39]—and the author of several children's books
.

Aidoo contributed the piece "To be a woman" to the 1984 anthology

Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.[40] Her story "Two Sisters" appears in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[41]

In 2000, Aidoo founded the Mbaasem 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[42] and a board of management.[43]

Aidoo was editor of the anthology African Love Stories (Ayebia, 2006),[44] a collection of 21 stories by writers including Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Doreen Baingana, Nawal El Saadawi, Helen Oyeyemi, Leila Aboulela, Molara Ogundipe, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Sefi Atta, Sindiwe Magona, and Véronique Tadjo.[45][46] In 2012, Aidoo published Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories, a compilation of short stories.[47]

Death

Aidoo died on 31 May 2023 in Accra.[48][49][50][51][52] Praising her as "an outstanding writer, advocate for women's cause, the cause of Africans and the progressive people around the world", President Nana Akufo-Addo announced that she would be given a state funeral,[53][54] with rites held from 13 July to 16 July,[55][56][57] On 13 July, her funeral took place in the forecourt of the State House,[58] 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.[59][60]

Honours and recognition

Aidoo received several awards, including winning the

Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa) for her novel Changes.[61]

In 2012, the volume Essays in honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70 was published, edited by Anne V. Adams, with contributors including

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Kinna Likimani, and others.[62][63][64]

Aidoo was the subject of a 2014 documentary film, The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo, made by Yaba Badoe.[65][66][67]

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 of

UNIFEM.[68]

In 2016, Aidoo's plays The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa were included as African Drama selections in the

Cambridge International Examinations.[69]

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 the

Nii Ayikwei Parkes as its director.[71][72]

Selected works

As editor

Notes

  1. ^ Many sources erroneously give 1942 as her date of birth.

References

  1. ^ Danquah, Nana-Ama (2 June 2023). "We are here: In memory of Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo". The Africa Report. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  2. ^ a b c "Ama Ata Aidoo | Ghanaian writer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  3. ISBN 978-0-19-027773-4
    . Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  4. ^ a b Banyiwa Horne, Naana (2001). "Aidoo, Ama Ata". Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing. Routledge.
  5. ^ a b "Welcome to Mbaasem". Mbaasem Foundation. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  6. ^ "Late Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo to be honoured with state-assisted burial". Modern Ghana. 15 June 2023.
  7. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo: Ghana's famous author and feminist dies". BBC News. 31 May 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  8. ^ Behrent, Megan. "Ama Ata Aidoo: Biographical Introduction". www.postcolonialweb.org. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  9. ISBN 9780798303446
    .
  10. doi:10.1163/18757421-90000320
    .
  11. ^ Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame Jr (6 September 2016). "Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo's action is about principles, not sheer human foibles". GhanaWeb. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  12. ^ "AMA ATA AIDOO (1942–)", Postcolonial African Writers, Routledge, 1998.
  13. ISBN 978-0-8160-8204-9
    .
  14. doi:10.4324/9780203058558-25
    . Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  15. ^ a b c d "Her Story". BBC World Service Service. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  16. ^ Innes, Lyn (11 June 2023). "Ama Ata Aidoo obituary". The Guardian.
  17. ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Ama Ata Aidoo". Books and Writers (Authors Calendar). Finland.
  18. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo". Casa África. 10 February 2017. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  19. ISBN 9781136593970
    .
  20. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo", BBC World Service.
  21. ^ Livingston, Robert Eric, "Using the Master's Tools: Resistance and the Literature of the African and South Asian Diasporas (review)", Research in African Literatures (Indiana University Press), Volume 33, Number 4, Winter 2002, pp. 219–221. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ral.2002.0111.
  22. JSTOR 25090585
    .
  23. ^ "African Success: Biography of Ama Ata AIDOO". African Success. 17 July 2009. Archived from the original on 24 May 2018. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
  24. ^ Williams, Alex (5 June 2023). "Ama Ata Aidoo, Groundbreaking Ghanaian Writer, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
  25. ^ "Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo's explosive interview on imperialism that went viral". GhanaWeb. 31 May 2023.
  26. ^ a b c d "Aidoo, (Christina) Ama Ata 1942–". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  27. Washington Post
    .
  28. ^ "Friends of Bogle", (London Metropolitan Archives), Aim 25, Archives in London and the M25 area.
  29. ISBN 9780820337531
    .
  30. ^ "OWWA’s First 20 Years" Archived March 23, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Inc.
  31. ^ "Brown bids farewell to playwright Ama Ata Aidoo". Brown University. 21 January 2011 – via YouTube.
  32. Graphic Online
    . Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  33. ^ "Ghana Association of Writers eulogises Ama Ata Aidoo". yfmghana.com. 6 June 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  34. ^ Agbedeh, Terh (26 June 2013). "Sustainability of literary prizes, as new one debuts". National Mirror. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 25 July 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  35. ^ "2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature Longlist Revealed". African Literary Magazines. The Single Story Foundation. 12 November 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2023.
  36. ^ "Programme for Anowa". tradingfacesonline.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  37. ISBN 9780415306515
    . Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  38. ^ Shaffi, Sarah (2 June 2023). "Author Ama Ata Aidoo, 'an inspiration to feminists everywhere', dies aged 81". The Guardian.
  39. ^ Ama Ata Aidoo biography, Heinemann/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  40. ^ "Table of Contents: Sisterhood is global". Catalog.vsc.edu. Anchor Press/Doubleday. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  41. ^ Aidoo, Ama Ata, "Two Sisters", in Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, pp. 532–542.
  42. ^ " Ghana international Book fair – Kinna Likimani", YouTube, 2010.
  43. ^ "Management and Board" Archived 25 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Mbaasem Foundation.
  44. ^ "Yaba Badoe's African Love Story, 'The Rival'", Buried in Print, 16 November 2011.
  45. ^ "African Love Stories, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo". Kinna Reads. 26 April 2010. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  46. ^ "Book Review: African Love Stories". Bookshy. February 2012. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  47. ^ "Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories", via Google Books.
  48. ^ "Renowned Ghanaian writer Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo is dead". GhanaWeb. 31 May 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  49. ^ "Ghanaian writer Prof Ama Ata Aidoo is dead". Graphic Online. 31 May 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  50. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo: Ghana's famous author and feminist dies". BBC News. 31 May 2023. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
  51. ^ Kubi, Vincent (31 May 2023). "Celebrated Playwright Prof Ama Ata Aidoo Is Dead". Daily Guide Network.
  52. ^ Yeboah-Afari, Ajoa (5 June 2023). "Remembering Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, our 'Auntie Ama'". GhanaWeb. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  53. ^ Dapatem, Donald Ato (14 June 2023). "Prof Ama Ata Aidoo to be given state burial". Graphic Online. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  54. ^ "Ghana: President Akufo-Addo Condoles With Family Of Ama Ata Aidoo …Renowned Author Gets State-Assisted Funeral". African Business. 15 June 2023.
  55. ^ "State-assisted funeral arrangements for Ama Ata Aidoo slated for July 13-16". GhanaWeb. 15 June 2023.
  56. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo Goes Home In July". Daily Guide Network. 15 June 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  57. ^ Annang, Evans (15 June 2023). "Ama Ata Aidoo will get a state assisted funeral – Akufo-Addo". pulse.com.gh. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  58. ^ "State funeral for Prof Ama Ata Aidoo on July 13". News Ghana. 3 July 2023. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  59. ^ Ekuful, Cliff (14 July 2023). "A literary giant has fallen …President says as he mourns Ama Ata Aidoo". Ghanaian Times. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  60. ^ Ahiable, Gloria Kafui (13 July 2023). "The World Will Miss Ama Ata Aidoo – Akufo-Addo". The Ghana Report. Retrieved 21 August 2023.
  61. ^ Verge, Violetta Jojo (2015). The Re-Presentation of Africa and the African in Anglophone West African Literature: Buchi Emecheta and Ama Ata Aidoo (PDF). San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  62. ISBN 9780956930705
    .
  63. ^ "Ama Ata Aidoo At 70 – New African Magazine". newafricanmagazine.com. March 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  64. ^ "Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70: A Reader in African Cultural Studies | Table of Contents". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
  65. ^ "The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo – a film by Yaba Badoe", official website.
  66. ^ Ellerson, Beti (December 2013), "Yaba Badoe talks about the documentary film project 'The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo'", African Women in Cinema.
  67. ^ Chambas, Shakira, and Sionne Neely, "The Art of AMA ATA AIDOO: Documentary Film Launch", African Women's Development Fund, 26 September 2014.
  68. ^ "Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize By-Laws" Archived 28 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine, ASA Women's Caucus.
  69. ^ Haffar, Anis (28 September 2016). "The literary genius of Ama Ata Aidoo". Education Matters with Anis Haffar. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  70. ^ "AUCC Launches Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing", Modern Ghana, 15 March 2017.
  71. ^ Murua, James (22 March 2017), "Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing opens in Accra, Ghana", James Murua Blog. Archived 26 January 2023 at the Wayback Machine.
  72. ^ Tandoh, Kwamina/Winifred Zuur, "Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing inaugurated", Ghana News Agency, 16 March 2017.
  73. ^ Owomoyela, Oyekan (2008). The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English. p. 64.
  74. ^ Dodgson-Katiyo, Pauline (1 November 2016). "Ama Ata Aidoo, Dilemma of a Ghost". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  75. ^ Thompson, Clifford, ed. (1999). World Authors 1990–1995. H.W. Wilson. p. 6.
  76. ^ Haffar, Anis (15 September 2016). "Ghana's precious playwright, Ama Ata Aidoo". Education Matters. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
  77. JSTOR 606803
    .
  78. ^ a b c "Anglophone and Lusophone African Writers (A Bibliography of Anglophone Women Writers)". University of Exeter. Archived from the original on 22 April 2003.
  79. World Literature Written in English
    , Volume 17, 1978 – Issue 1, pp. 55–57; via Taylor & Francis Online.
  80. ^
    JSTOR 40239082
    .
  81. ISSN 0106-5734
    .
  82. ^ 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.

Further reading

Library resources about
Ama Ata Aidoo
By Ama Ata Aidoo
  • 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.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ama_Ata_Aidoo&oldid=1218129332"