Ama Ata Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo (23 March 1942 – 31 May 2023) was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academician. She was the Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Aidoo's first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making her the first published female African dramatist.
Also recorded as Christina Ama Aidoo · Ama Christina Ata Aidoo · Ama-Attah Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo

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- Name
- Ama Ata Aidoo
- Birth Name
- Christina Ama Ata Aidoo
- Born
- 23 March 1942
- Birthplace
- Abeadzi Kyiakor, Gold Coast (now Ghana)
- Died
- 31 May 2023
- Place of death
- Accra, Ghana
- Education
- Wesley Girls' High School University of Ghana
- Occupation
- * Author
- Nationality
- Ghana
- Fields
- poetry · drama · fiction literature
- Known for
- Our Sister Killjoy · Anowa · No Sweetness Here · Birds · The Dilemma of a Ghost · Changes: A Love Story · Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories · Someone talking to sometime
- Honours
- Commonwealth Writers' Prize · Nelson Mandela Prize · The Mbari Club
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Ama Ata Aidoo (23 March 1942 – 31 May 2023) was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academician. She was the Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Aidoo's first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making her the first published female African dramatist.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q298224 · wikipedia · Ama Ata Aidoo
In this article
Biography
Biography
In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Ama Ata Aidoo studied at Wesley Girls' High School, University of Ghana and Stanford University. The recorded working language is English and Fante. The field of work recorded is poetry, drama and fiction literature. Places of work recorded in the authority are Zimbabwe. Employment is recorded with Brown University, University of Cape Coast and University of Richmond. Positions recorded include Minister for Education. Works named in the authority record are Our Sister Killjoy, Anowa, No Sweetness Here, Birds, The Dilemma of a Ghost and Changes: A Love Story. Distinctions recorded are Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Nelson Mandela Prize and The Mbari Club.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Ama Ata Aidoo • Birth Name — Christina Ama Ata Aidoo • Born — 23 March 1942 • Birthplace — Abeadzi Kyiakor, Gold Coast (now Ghana) • Died — 31 May 2023 • Place of death — Accra, Ghana • Education — Wesley Girls' High School University of Ghana • Occupation — * Author • playwright • professor • Genre — * Drama • fiction • poetry • Subject — * Comparative literature • postcolonial literature • Notable Works — * The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965) • Anowa (1970) • Our Sister Killjoy (1977) • Changes (1991)
Early life
Early life
Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on 23 March, 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, in the Central Region of Ghana. She was initially called Christiana Ama Aidoo. Some sources (including Megan Behrent, Brown University, and Africa Who's Who) have stated that she was born on 31st March. She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata. Aidoo was raised in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. Her grandfather was murdered by neocolonialists, which brought her father's attention to the importance of educating the children and families of the village on the history and events of the era. This led him to open up the first school in their village and influenced Aidoo to attend Wesley Girls' High School, where she first decided she wanted to be a writer. Aidoo later credited her years at Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast with nurturing her early interest in literature.
Education
Education
From 1957, Aidoo attended Wesley Girls' Senior High School in Cape Coast. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1961 where she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English and wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist.
Career
Career
After graduating, Aidoo held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University in California before returning to Ghana in 1969 to teach English at the University of Ghana. She served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies there and as a lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, where she eventually rose to the position of professor. Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months, realizing that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all. She has portrayed the role of African women in contemporary society. She has opined that the idea of nationalism has been deployed by recent leaders as a means of keeping people oppressed. She criticized those literate Africans who profess to love their country but are seduced by the benefits of the developed world. She believed in a distinct African identity, which she viewed from a female perspective. She held strong Pan-Africanist views on the necessity of unity among African countries and was outspoken about the centuries of exploitation of Africa's resources and peoples by western powers. In 1983, she moved to live in Zimbabwe, where she continued her work in education, including as a curriculum developer for the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education, as well as writing. While in Harare, she published a collection of poems in 1985, Someone Talking to Sometime, and wrote a children's book entitled The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories (1986). In London, England, in 1986, she delivered the Walter Rodney Visions of Africa lecture organized by the support group of Bogle-L'Ouverture publishing house. Aidoo received a Fulbright Scholarship award in 1988, was writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond, Virginia in 1989, and taught various English courses at Hamilton College in Clinton New York in the early mid-1990s. In 1991, she and African-American poet Jayne Cortez established and co-chaired the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA), and board members of OWWA have included J. E. Franklin, Cheryll Y. Greene, Rashidah Ismaili, Louise Meriwether, Maya Angelou, Rosamond S. King, Margaret Busby, Gabrielle Civil, Alexis De Veaux, LaTasha N. Diggs, Zetta Elliott, Donette Francis, Paula Giddings, Renée Larrier, Tess Onwueme, Coumba Touré, Maryse Condé, Nancy Morejón, and Sapphire. From 2004 to 2011, Aidoo was a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University. She chaired the Ghana Association of Writers Book Festival from its inception in 2011. Aidoo was a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature (alongside Dele Olojede, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Margaret Busby, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, and Zakes Mda), created in 2013 as a platform for African writers of debut novels of fiction. At Yari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue, the symposium of African writers held in Accra, Ghana, in 2013, Aidoo was a plenary speaker, alongside Angela Davis and others.
Death
Death
Aidoo died on 31 May 2023 in Accra, aged 81. Praising her as "an outstanding writer, advocate for women's cause, the cause of Africans and the progressive people around the world", President Nana Akufo-Addo announced that she would be given a state funeral, with rites held from 13 July to 16 July, On 13 July, her funeral took place in the forecourt of the State House, followed by lying-in-state at her home town of Abeadze Kyiakor on 15 July, and a thanksgiving church service and burial on Sunday, 16 July. According to a tribute from the Caine Prize council, Aidoo had been working on a new novel for some years before her death.
Selected works
Selected works
• The Dilemma of a Ghost (play), Accra: Longman, 1965. New York: Macmillan, 1971. • Anowa (play based on a Ghanaian legend), London: Longman, 1970. New York: Humanities Press, 1970. • No Sweetness Here: A Collection of Short Stories, London: Longman, 1970. New York: Doubleday. • Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (novel), Longman, 1977. • Someone Talking to Sometime (poetry collection), Harare: College Press, 1986. • The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories (for children), Enugu: Tana Press, 1986. • Birds and Other Poems, Harare: College Press, 1987. • An Angry Letter in January (poems), Coventry: Dangaroo Press, 1992, • Changes: A Love Story (novel), London: The Women's Press, 1991. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1993. • The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers; Heinemann African Writers Series, 1997. • Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2012,.
As editor
As editor
• African Love Stories: An Anthology, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2006..
Career and activity
Career and activity
Ama Ata Aidoo worked in poetry, drama and fiction literature. She was employed by Brown University, University of Cape Coast and University of Richmond. Recorded position is Minister for Education. She belonged to Organization of Women Writers of Africa and Mbaasem Foundation. She worked at Zimbabwe.
Identity
Identity
Ama Ata Aidoo is recorded as having received Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Nelson Mandela Prize and The Mbari Club.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1942
Ama Ata Aidoo born at Abeadzi Kyiakor.
2023
Ama Ata Aidoo died at Accra.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Abeadzi Kyiakor.
Birth place
Accra.
Death place
Writings
Aidoo's plays include The Dilemma of a Ghost, produced at Legon in 1964 (first published in 1965) and Pittsburgh in 1988, and Anowa, published in 1971 and produced at the Gate Theatre in London in 1991. Her works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African worldviews. Her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy, was published in 1977 and remains one of her most popular works. It is notable for portraying a dissenting perspective on sexuality in Africa, and especially LGBT in Africa. Whereas one popular idea on the continent is that homosexuality is alien to Africa and an intrusion of ideas of Western culture into a pure, inherently heterosexual "African" culture, Aidoo portrays the main character of Killjoy as indulging in lesbian fantasies of her own, and maintaining sympathetic relationships with lesbian characters. Many of Aidoo's other protagonists are also women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time, as in her play Anowa. Her novel Changes: A Love Story won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa). She was also an accomplished poet—her collection Someone Talking to Sometime won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987 —and the author of several children's books. Aidoo contributed the piece "To be a woman" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan. Her story "Two Sisters" appears in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby. In 2000, Aidoo founded the Mbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission "to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output", which she ran together with her daughter Kinna Likimani and a board of management. Aidoo was editor of the anthology African Love Stories (Ayebia, 2006), a collection of 21 stories by writers including Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Doreen Baingana, Nawal El Saadawi, Helen Oyeyemi, Leila Aboulela, Molara Ogundipe, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Sefi Atta, Sindiwe Magona, and Véronique Tadjo. In 2012, Aidoo published Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories, a compilation of short stories.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q298224: Ama Ata Aidoo
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Ama Ata Aidoo”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
scholarly publication
- Ama Ata Aidoo: Ghana’s Literary Treasure:, Oral and Written African Poetry and Poetics, 2024
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2024
Honours and recognition
Aidoo received several awards throughout her career, including winning the Mbari Club prize in 1962 for her short story "No Sweetness Here", and the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa) for her novel Changes. In 2012, the volume Essays in honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70 was published, edited by Anne V. Adams, with contributors including Atukwei Okai, Margaret Busby, Maryse Condé, Micere Mugo, Toyin Falola, Biodun Jeyifo, Kofi Anyidoho, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, Naana Banyiwa Horne, Nana Wilson-Tagoe, Carole Boyce Davies, Emmanuel Akyeampong, James Gibbs, Vincent O. Odamtten, Jane Bryce, Esi Sutherland-Addy, Femi Osofisan, Kwesi Yankah, Abena Busia, Yaba Badoe, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Kinna Likimani, and others. Aidoo was the subject of a 2014 documentary film, The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo, made by Yaba Badoe. The Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, awarded by the Women's Caucus of the African Studies Association for an outstanding book published by a woman that prioritizes African women's experiences, is named in honour of Ama Ata Aidoo and of Margaret C. Snyder, who was the founding director of UNIFEM. In 2016, Aidoo's plays The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa were included as African Drama selections in the Cambridge International Examinations. Launched in March 2017, the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing (Aidoo Centre), under the auspices of the Kojo Yankah School of Communications Studies at the African University College of Communications (AUCC) in Adabraka, Accra, was named in her honour —the first centre of its kind in West Africa, with Nii Ayikwei Parkes as its director.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Ama Ata Aidoo: Ghana’s Literary Treasure:, Oral and Written African Poetry and Poetics, 2024Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q298224: Ama Ata AidooWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
The authorities additionally record the headings Christina Ama Aidoo, Ama Christina Ata Aidoo and Ama-Attah Aidoo. Her recorded languages were English and Fante. Work and production.
Identity and origins
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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