Women’s History Month profile: Ama Ata Aidoo

Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, née Christina Ama Aidoo has done it all. She is a former Minister of Education in the government of Ghana, an author, poet, playwright and academic. She is enthusiastic about women’s struggle and women are very prominent in her work as she usually uses them as protagonists who defy the stereotypical women’s roles of their time.

To realise her passion for women’s rights she founded Ghana-based, Mbaasem Foundation to develop and support the sustainability of the work of African women writers who are usually sidelined in the industry.

In 1964 Professor Aidoo shined bright when she became the first published African woman dramatist after her first play, “The Dilemma of a Ghost” was published. Her first novel, “Our Sister Killjoy” is one of her most popular works. Aidoo’s novel “Changes” won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Africa). To add to that, she is also an accomplished poet with a “Someone Talking to Sometime” collection which won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987 and and she’s also published several children’s books.

Quotes we love by Ama Ata Aidoo

“My lady Silk, remember that a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman – including adultery…but in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished.” ― Ama Ata Aidoo, Changes: A Love Story

“But what she also came to know was that someone somewhere would always see in any kind of difference, an excuse to be mean.”― Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy