Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo (* 1942 in Ghana) is a Ghanaian author and politician.

Early Years

Aidoo was born in Abeadzi Kyiakor in the Central Region of Ghana as the daughter of a Fanti chief. She visited Wesley Girls’ High School in Cape Coast, then studied English language and literature at the University of Legon. She participated in a theatre group and in a writers’ workshop. During this time, she wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost. During the sixties, Aidoo taught at the university of Legon.

Political Life

From 1982 until 1983 she was minister of education under president Jerry Rawlings. Her goal was to make education accessible for everyone in Ghana. She soon had to realize that this was not realistic and she resigned.

The Author

Aidoos books deal with the situation of Women in West Africa, with politics and religion.

In her novel “Changes: A Love Story” she writes about polygamy in modern Ghana. For this novel, she received the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1993

Works

Other works by Ama Ata Aidoo:

• Anowa (a play based on a Ghanaian legend; (1970)
• No Sweetness Here: A Collection of Short Stories (1970)
• Birds and Other Poems (1988)
• The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997)
• Our Sister Killjoy (1977)
• Changes: A Love Story (novel; 1991)
• The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965)
• Someone Talking to Sometime (a poetry collection)(1986)
• An Angry Letter in January (poems; 1992)
• The Eagle and the Chicken (1986)

(List of works quoted from Wikipedia)

Literature

• Edith Kohrs-Amissah: Aspects of Feminism and gender in the novels of three West African Women Writers. Ama Ata Aidoo, Amma Darko, Buchi Emecheta. Books on African Studies, 2001

Weblinks

• Ama Ata Aidoo - Her Story on BBC World Service
• Aidoo