Last Saturday, Professor Ama Ata Aidoo celebrated her birthday. This occasion reminded me of how overjoyed I was when I first met her . The year was 2008, I had recently started working for the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), and one day Ama Ata Aidoo (as she is popularly called) dropped by the office. I was beyond excited. I mean, Ama Ata Aidoo is the rockstar of African women writers. I had read ‘Anowa’ in secondary school, acted the role of the slave girl in ‘Dilemma of a Ghost’ whilst in college, and my first degree dissertation had been on ‘The concept of home in the novels of Ama Ata Aidoo and Buchi Emecheta’. Ama Ata Aidoo’s influence on my life went beyond my education. When my friend Alberta Stevens and I started ‘Southern Narrative’, a global dimensions education project in London, we named our first project ‘The Anowa Project’ to pay homage to the inspiring African women we had trained to run workshops in schools in South London dealing with the very challenging issues of identity, race and diversity. So after all these years of reading Ama Ata Aidoo’s novels you can imagine that I was in groupie heaven when I meet her at my place of work.

The best thing about meeting Ama Ata Aidoo has been that she is as inspiring in real life as she is in her books. I recall interviewing the Professor at Mbaasem (Mbaasem translates from Akan as Women’s Affairs), the foundation she established to promote African women writers and we chatted for 2 hours. She was full of insights about African women writers, social development and shared insights on the challenges of combining writing with social change work. This interview was featured in ‘Women Leading Africa: Conversations with Inspirational African Women‘.

I asked a number of friends and colleagues to share their thoughts about the good Professor.

Amina Doherty, coordinator of FRIDA, painter and HE(ART)IST said:

“I love Ama Ata Aidoo! Not simply because she reminded me when I needed to hear it that I too, could be a girl who could, but because she was responsible for introducing me to “love'” in African literature. She took this idea of ‘the revolutionary power of love’ out of critical theory and feminist academia and put it into short stories and tales that I could relate to. In the introduction to the collection: ‘African Love Stories‘ she says: “If we insist, as some of us do, that love is about the human condition, then there is hardly any aspect of women’s loves which [love] stories do not touch…the human heart is all out there in these stories: beleaguered and bleeding, or bold and occassionaly triumphant.” Aidoo’s words and her effort to highlight love as a central aspect of our lives reminds me of how important it is to document African love stories as a means of better understanding who we are, and how we live – as Africans, as people. She highlights the fact that the stories we often hear and read about Africa are the ones deemed to be ‘more important’ because they are of social and political significance, but that all of those ‘very important things’ must be based in love. Our Space is indeed ‘Love‘. “

Beatrice Boakye-Yiadom, Grants Manager of AWDF had this to share:

“I read Ama Ata Aidoo’s ‘Dilemma of a Ghost’ in round about 1981 but the lessons from the story has stayed with me all these years. I still remember
the determination, independence, hopefulness, and assertiveness of Eulalie. I remember the ghost who did not know whether to go to Elmina or to go to
Cape coast a situation that most of us very often get into and are not too good at making the right choices. I remember Ama Ata Aidoo’s dexterity in
“brofulising” English words. My favourite proverb from that book which has stayed with me all these years is “The corn that will burn shall burn whether roasted or boiled” and my thoughts have always been that if God does give me the care or custody of a corn that is destined to burn, I strongly believe that I have the power to turn its fortunes around and force it to realign its destiny for the betterment of society. It is possible to do that.

I also like the short stories “The Girl Who Can and Other Stories” which I read in 2010 I think. I like the assertiveness and independence of most of the women characters, I like the fact that most of them were “no nonsense” characters and I like the general liberal atmosphere most of the women find themselves in those stories.

All in all I will read Ama Ata Aidoo any day. I think she is a marvelous writer, very witty and is able to bring our culture to bear in her writings
to such an extent that even people who are not familiar with the culture are able to appreciate it.

I think I will go back and read all these books again so I can savour them all over again. I still have all those books from my days in school.

Auntie Ama you have adequately paid your dues”

Minna Salami, the award winning writer and blogger behind Ms Afropolian had this to say:

“There’s an interview in Meridians where Aidoo speaks about something I seldom see addressed, namely creating spaces (clubs, she calls it) for women who ‘just want to sit, have a drink, nibble at something and talk about nothing to other women’, a club where we can ‘refuse to be nothing or to be everything’.
Among the many contributions of hers that make my world that bit more enriched, those particular words remind me of how independent and gracious her mind is.”

What are your memories of Ama Ata Aidoo? What does her writing mean to you? Share your thoughts and indeed your well wishes for her via the comments box below

 

By: Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah

Communications Specialist, AWDF