No Sweetness Here

Ama Ata Aidoo was born in 1942 in the Fante village of Abeadzi Kyiakor, near the town of Saltpond, Ghana. Her father was a chief of the Fante people. In the 1940s, Ghana was engaged in a struggle for independence from Great Britain, and Aidoo’s grandfather was murdered by colonialists. This event inspired her father to found the first school in the village and to encourage his daughter to complete her education, as he felt it was important for Ghanaians to understand their history. Aidoo attended Wesley Girl’s Senior High School, considered one of the best high schools in Ghana. Her mother encouraged her as well, but most valuable to young Aidoo was a piece of advice from her aunt: “My child, get as far as you can into this education […] as for marriage, it is something a woman picks up along the way” (Allan, T.J. Afterword. Changes: A Love Story, by Ama Ata Aidoo, New York, Feminist Press at City University of New York, 1993, p. 237). Aidoo went to the University of Ghana where she wrote and published the play The Dilemma of a Ghost, making her the first African woman to publish a play. In 1964, she also published the short story “No Sweetness Here” in the Nigerian literary magazine Black Orpheus.