“‘It’s not easy.’

She was superb. The words rolled off her tongue like pips from oranges or cherries: articles thrown away with wistful abandon, to be forgotten utterly or later, maybe, searched for, and used.

She was great: an advocate who could stand her ground with the best of them. A lawyer who knew how to get all to see her point. Their lordships would have been wowed.” Her Hair Politics, p. 1, The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, by Ama Ata Aidoo, Heinemann 1997.

Above is an extract from the short story Her Hair Politics by Ghanaian trailblazer Ama Ata Aidoo, from the book The Girl Who Can which graces my library. Who was Ama Ata Aidoo?

Ama Ata Aidoo was the first published female African dramatist with her play The Dilemma of a Ghost published in 1965. She was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, who served in the government of Jerry Rawlings as Secretary for Education from 1982 to 1983. As the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, she hailed from a royal family of the Fante ethnic group of southern Ghana. Her grandfather was murdered by neocolonialists, event which influenced her father in putting a huge emphasis on education and the learning of history and current events. In 1992, she won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra, Ghana, to promote and support the work of African women writers. She taught at different universities in Zimbabwe, and the United States.

Writer Ama Ata Aidoo belongs to the generation of African women writers who dared to speak up loud and clear about African women issues at a time when it was not common. Like Mariama Ba, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Aidoo led the way and broke barriers for the current generation of African writers. In a 2014 interview with Zeinab Badawi of BBC, she said “People sometimes question me, for instance, why are your women so strong? And I say, that is the only woman I know.” This is what made Aidoo’s work touch millions because she portrayed the true African woman that we all know. So long Champion Aidoo, rest assured that you have influenced millions, and many are now following in your footsteps! 

To learn more, please check out the articles on The Conversation by Rose Sackeyfio, BBC, and the Guardian. President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana said, “Through her work, she made a tremendous contribution to the development of our country and continent, and expressed so many of our feelings about our fate as Ghanaians, and, indeed as Africans.” As you read back the extract at the top, doesn’t it remind you of Ama Ata Aidoo herself, the writer who advocate for women’s rights… the lordships were definitely wowed!