Ama Ata Aidoo (1942–2023)

This is a fiery book. The main character, “our sister” or Sissie for short, travels from Ghana to Europe, and comments on her life as “the african woman” amongst the white natives.

The portions set in Bavaria and London are the angriest: Sissie is deeply, intensely angered at the natives’ patronizing attitudes (intentional or otherwise), their cluelessness, their rationalizations, their happiness, the size of German food portions, the juicy plums that are so delicious. It’s an show more anger stemming from centuries of injustice that lashes out and that is confused in settling on targets but that is too wild and too real and too just to be anything else.

The final portion of the book, a letter to an ex-lover, I felt was the best part of the book. It’s where Sissie’s anger is turned on African immigrants whose post facto justifications for not helping the mother country is infuriating to her. This section, too, is confused and not always reasonable, but it provides more of an explanation for why Sissie feels the way she does, and that explicit insight into a deeply angry person’s motivations unlocks an appreciation for the character that wasn’t there for me in the earlier parts.

Dealing with centuries of systematic oppression is not an easy thing to do: no-one who proclaims a simple solution comes off looking good. Very nicely done! show less

I picked up Changes to fit the Ghana prompt for the Read the World challenge, happy to have found a book by a woman, even happier to see it was from The Feminist Press.

One of the blurbs on the back cover compares this to So Long a Letter, which is an interesting comparison. Not only are both books written by African women, both are fascinating and frustrating by turn, for the same reason – the women these stories are about are so very different from me.

After Esi divorces her husband, she show more decides to do things differently, and has a casual affair with a married man — a relationship that quickly becomes less and less casual. Where this book really shines is investigating all the ways their relationship is shaped by the society around them — by their friends, relatives, jobs, etc. All the various opinions held on Esi's divorce in the first place, all the judgements and concerns and advice she faces trying to live life on her own terms.

I can't imagine making some of the choices Esi does, but then again, it is also difficult to imagine having my convictions and reactions persistently undermined the way hers are here. show less

156/2020. This is a social realist novel about a middle class urban Ghanaian woman who falls out of marriage and into love, with all the consequences for herself and her extended family, told from an African feminist perspective. The author manages to be both sharply perceptive and amusingly witty without sacrificing realistic portrayal. It's also freer in form than traditional European novels, with more influence from oral culture and West African conversational style. Thoroughly show more enjoyable.

Quotes

I'm laughing so hard: "years of having a clever woman in his home and an unbroken chain of rather stupid heads of department at his place of work had taught him not to take anything for granted in a discussion."

LMAO: "Indeed the only opinion Musa Musa could possibly have shared with African heads of state is that any discussion of mortality is treason and punishable, by death of course, if the circumstances are right."

Grandma on marriage and society: "[...] remember a man always gained in stature through any way he chose to associate with a woman. And that included adultery. Especially adultery. Esi, a woman has always been diminished in her association with a man. A good woman was she who quickened the pace of her own destruction. To refuse, as a woman, to be destroyed, was a crime that society spotted very quickly and punished swiftly and severely."
[...]
"Life on this earth need not always be some humans being gods and others being sacrificial animals. Indeed, that can be changed."

On adaptive traditions: "All the spirits should have been appeased: ancient coastal and Christian, ancient northern and Islamic, the ghost of the colonisers." show less

Ghana

A surprisingly complex and nuanced account of the narrator's travels from Ghana to Europe and other destinations. Don't let editorial reviews fool you with their domesticated descriptions--this is a much better book than they would lead yoo to believe. It addresses not only colonialism and overt, individual acts of racism, but also ingrained racist perspectives that are obvious when one is their object yet inexplicable and invisible when one is not. The book is written in a pastiche of show more styles, with the interwoven poetry and prose sections being most effective; sadly, the "letter" that closes the volume is, while interesting in its content, tedious stylistically. Read with Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven and Ntozake Shange's [b:For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf|58098|for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf|Ntozake Shange|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347933527s/58098.jpg|505856]. show less