Ama Ata Aidoo

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christina Ama Ata Aidoo (born March 23, 1942 in Saltpond ) is a Ghanaian writer and politician. She enjoys worldwide recognition and her books have been translated into many languages. The second woman has so far been published in German. Aidoo lived a long time after her time as a politician in Ghana as a writer in Zimbabwe and in the USA , where she also taught.

Youth and education

Aidoo was born as the daughter of a chief of the Fante from Abeadzi Kyiakor in the central region of Ghana, which at that time was called the Gold Coast as a colony of Great Britain .

She attended Wesley High School in Cape Coast and then Legon , the University of Ghana , where she studied English from 1961 to 1964. At the university she was an active member of the theater group and took part in the workshop for writers. During this time she wrote her first piece with the English title The Dilemma of a Ghost in 1964. Between 1964 and 1967 Aidoo taught herself at the University of Legon.

Aidoo as a politician

Between 1982 and 1983 she was Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Ghana under President Jerry Rawlings . During her tenure, she pursued the goal of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all, but soon discovered that her ideas could not be realized in this way. After just 18 months, she resigned from her position.

your work

Aidoo's works have been shaped by the eventful history of the country in which they were created. In her pieces, Aidoo repeatedly works on the situation of women in Africa. She also addresses political issues and raises religious questions.

In her book The Second Woman, for example, she deals with the conflict between a woman with a higher education and her less educated husband. She separates from him and falls in love with a Muslim man who is already married to another woman. She discovers the difficulties that are stuck somewhere between the desire for affection, the will for self-determination and life as a second wife.

Awards

Aidoo has won many awards for her work. So also in 1993 the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best book (Africa) for her novel Changes.

It was included in the anthology Daughters of Africa , edited in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

Works

  • The Dilemma of a Ghost (play), 1965.
  • Anowa (play), 1969.
  • No Sweetness Here (Short Stories), 1970, ISBN 1-55861-119-3 .
  • Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (short story), 1977.
  • The Second Woman (Roman) / Changes, 1991, ISBN 1-55861-065-0 .
  • The girl who can and other stories.

Secondary 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
  • Janheinz Jahn : Who's Who in African Literature . Horst Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen 1972, ISBN 3-7711-0153-0 , p. 25f.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Aidoo, Ama Ata
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aidoo, Christina Ama Ata (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ghanaian writer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Saltpond