World famous Ghanaian Poet and Author, Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo, is dead.
She reportedly died in the early hours of Wednesday, May 31, 2023, in Accra, Ghana.
The late Ama Ata Aidoo is noted for her contributions to African Literature, Governance, Tertiary Education and Women Emancipation.
Ama Ata Aidoo, was born Christina Ama Ata Aidoo, on March 23, 1942, in Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, Gold Coast (now Ghana].
She was a prolific writer whose work emphasized the paradoxical position of the modern African woman.
Aidoo began to write seriously while an honours student at the University of Ghana (B.A., 1964).
She won early recognition with a problem play, “The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965)”, in which a Ghanaian student returning home brings his African American wife into the traditional culture and the extended family that he now finds restrictive.
Aidoo also wrote her semiautobiographical experimental first novel, “Our Sister Killjoy”; or, “Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint” in 1966.
Aidoo won a fellowship to Stanford University in California and later returned to teach at Cape Coast, Ghana (1970–82), and subsequently accepted various visiting professorships in the United States and Kenya.
Her other books include, “ No Sweetness Here (1970)”, “Anowa (a play1970)”, The Eagle and the Chickens (1986; a collection of children’s stories), among others.
Between 1982 and 1983, she served as Ghana’s Minister of Education. She was 80 years old.
