Ama Ata Aidoo was born in 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, Ghana. A poet, novelist and playwright, Aidoo attended the Wesley Girls High School and the University of Ghana where she received her bachelor's degree in 1964. As an undergraduate student, she was invited to the University of Ibidan’s African Writers Workshop, where she met and was influenced by the writers Langston Hughes, Chinua Achebe, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Wole Sokinka, and Christopher Okigbo. Her play The Dilemma of a Ghost was published in 1965 to critical acclaim. She is the author of several novels, plays and collections of poetry including, No Sweetness Here (Longman, 1970), Anowa (Longman, 1970), Our Sister Killjoy, Or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (Longman, 1977), Birds and Other Stories (1987), Changes (Heinemann, 1991), An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems (Dangaroo Press, 1992), The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997), Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories (Ayebia Clark Publishing, 2012), and After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). In 1974 she became a fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University where she also worked as a consulting professor at the Phelps-Stokes fund’s Ethnic Studies Program. She has taught at many colleges including the University of Ghana, Cape Coast University, Hamilton College, Brown, Xavier University, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Oberlin, Hamilton, and Brandeis. She was also the minister of education for Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration.
1942-03-23
Ghana
University College of Ghana
On Reading Jackie Kay
For a Zulu in the Bayous
Of Gifts and ReferencesP
Someone Talking to Sometime (Harare: College Press, 1986);
Birds and Other Poems (Harare: College Press, 1987);
An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems (Dangaroo Press, 1992);
After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)
Adams, Anne V. (ed.). Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70: A Reader in African Cultural Studies. Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2012.
Allen, Nafeesh. "Negotiating with the Diaspora: an Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo," Scholar & Feminist Online, 2009.
"Ama Ata Aidoo in discussion about her play The Dilemma of a Ghost, interviewed by Michael Walling, July, 19, 2006, Accra, Ghana."
"Ama Ata Aidoo on feminism in Africa—BBC HARDtalk." BBC HARDtalk, July, 22, 2014.
"Ama Ata Aidoo’s humorous speech at launch of Centre for Creative Writing." GhanaWeb TV, March 16, 2017.
"An Audience with Ama Ata Aidoo at the Royal African Society’s annual literature festival.” Ama Ata Aidoo in conversation with Wangui wa Goro, The Royal African Society, July 14, 2014.
Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka and G. Wilentz, Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo, Africa Research & Publications, 1999.
Badoe, Yaba (dir.). The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo (2014), film.
Kamata, Suzanne. “A Profile of Ama Ata Aidoo.” Literary Mama, Feb. 2016.
Misra, Aditya. "Death in Surprise: Gender and Power Dynamics in Ama Ata Aidoo's Anowa." Journal of Drama Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2012, pp. 81–91.
Odamtten, Vincent O. The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading Against Neocolonialism. University Press of Florida, 1994.
Pujolràs-Noguer, Esther. An African (Auto)biography. Ama Ata Aidoo's Literary Quest: Strangeness, nation and tradition, Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012.
http://writersprojectghana.com/ama_ata_aidoo/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ama-Ata-Aidoo, Owomoyela, Oyekan. The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945, Columbia University Press, 2008.
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