Ghanaian writer, whose acclaimed books include No Sweetness Here (1970), a collection of short stories, the semi-autobiographical novel Our Sister Killjoy (1977), and Changes (1991), which won the 1993 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region. The central theme in her work is the role of women in African culture. "Whom am I to write about? Man? But why?," she asked in the essay 'Unwelcome Pals and Decorative Slaves' (1981). "Do you ask your male writers why they write about men? It should be natural for a man to probe, to mourn, to celebrate the human male. . . . And that should go for women writers."

"'My dear young man,' said the visiting professor, 'to give you the decent answer your anxiety demands, I would have to tell you a detailed history of the African continent. And to do that, I shall have to speak every day, twenty-four hours a day, for at least three thousand years. And I don't mean to be rude to you or anything, but who has that kind of time?'" (Our Sister Killjoy: Or, Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint by Ama Ata Aidoo, London: Longman, 1994, p. 111; first published in 1977)

Ama Ata Aidoo was born in the Fanti town of Abeadzi Kyiakor, Gold Coast, now Ghana, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama and his wife Maame Abba Abasema.Her father was a chief of the tow, a political individual, as Aidoo's grandfather who was killed by the British. Because of her father's position, Aidoo grew up in a royal household with a clear sense of African traditions. Aidoo's father was also an advocate of Western education and sent her to Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast.

'Unto Us a Child Is Born,' Aidoo's first story, which she submitted to a short story contest organized by a national newspaper, won the prize. With the money Aidoo bought a pair of shoes. "As an Akan, Fante woman, I grew up in a society where there was not much discrimination against girls. That is why I could be a writer and nobody could tell me writing was a man's job." (Ama Ata Aidoo "Nobody could tell me writing was a man’s job," interview by Princess Arita Anim, DVV International, 2017, https://www.dvv-international.de/en/. Accessed 1 July 2025)

In 1964 Aidoo graduated from the University of Ghana in Legon, where she received a bachelor's degree in English. At that  time she called herself "Christina Ata Aidoo". While still studying, she started to publish poetry, and began to work with Efua Sutherland, founder of the Ghana Drama Studio. Writing poetry had been already her childhood's dream.

Aidoo's work falls into various genres: fiction, drama, poetry, essays, letters and criticism. Much of her writing focuses on the legacy of the slave trade, the impact of neo-colonialism on the educated Ghanaian elite, the notion of exile and African diasporic identity, and the role of African women in the process of change. As an African feminist, Ainoo has placed her stories in the African context.

Exploring her own past, Aidoo wrote once in a poem: "Daughter of my Mother and my Father's Orphan, / what is to become of me?" ('Homesickness,' in An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems, Coventry England: Dangaroo Press, 1992, p. 63) From the beginning, Aidoo's plays have drawn on the conflict between traditional culture and Western values.

She gained first notice with The Dilemma of a Ghost. It premiered at Commonwealth Hall's Open-Air Theatre, University of Ghana, in March 1964. Aidoo has said, that she got the gist for the work from a children's playsong in Takorandi. In the story a young man from Ghana, Ato Yaweson, who was educated in the United States, returns home and brings with him seeds of conflict. The conflict is compounded by his wife's ignorance and immaturity. In the end Ato's mother helps to save the family. Aidoo's play was written after Ghana had gained freedom from colonial rule and euphoria had turned into disillusionment.

The Dilemma of a Ghost received mixed reviews, but was succesfully produced in Accra, Lagos, Ibadan, and elsewhere. Aidoo's second play, Anowa (1970), was based on a Ghanaian folktale of a girl who defied her parents in choice of her husband, and marries an attractive stranges who turn out to be the devil in disguise. Its inspirational source was a story that Aidoo's mother had told her. Anowa had a successful production in Britain in 1991.

No Sweetness Here, originally published by Longman House in London, collected Aidoo's early short stories, written from the mid-1960s. It was republished in 1995 by the Feminist Press. In 'Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral' Aidoo uses the technique of oral storytelling. "I come from a people who told stories," she said in an interview in 1986. "When I was growing up in the village we had a man who was a good story teller. And my mother 'talks' stories and sings songs." ('Ama Ata Aidoo' by Adeola James, in In Their Own Voices: African Women Writers Talk, edited Adeola James, London: James Currey, 1990, p. 19)

'Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral' takes the position that women and traditions are the backbone of society. The narrator tells her sister about Auntie Araba, beautiful, enterprising, and economically self-empowered woman. In her puberty she is sent to stay with a lady relative and learns to bake epitsi, tatare, boodoo, and other sweeties, "which only satisfy the tongue but do not fill the stomach." She returns home after troubles with the lady's husband – Araba has a child, Ato, and marries a good husband. "I don't know who advised her to drop all those fancy foods. But she did, and finally started baking bread, ordinary bread. That turned out better for her." ('Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral,' No Sweetness Here, New York: Doubleday, 1971, p. 137) Ato gets a girl named Mansa pregnant; he eventually betrays her. Araba takes care of Mansa: "They say that from time, the baking business grew and grew and grew." (Ibid., p. 141) Mansa starts to bake with machines. Araba dies, her spirit gone. But Mansa, whom she has trained, is expected to carry on her legacy.

Aidoo's work at home and teaching took all her spare time and it was not until 1977 when she finished her next book, Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint. She began to work on it in 1972, in the atmosphere of oppression after a military coup.

The innovative novel dealt with the encounter between African and European cultures, and the psychological impact of post-colonialism on women. The young heroine, Sissie, is disillusioned and alienated by her experience in England and in the "heart of darkness" of Bavaria, Germany. She feels uncomfortable about the use of a language that "enslaved" her, and she experiences racism and ignorance about Africa throughout her journeys. When her friendship comes on the brink of lesbian love, Sissie is disgusted, and decides to return to Ghana.

Aidoo's narrative technique alternates between prose and poetry, sometimes one word covers an entire page. Sissie is not an omniscient narrator but other characters are treated as equals, who speak in their voices. In the manner of oral storytelling, Aidoo appeals directly to the reader.

Our Sister Killjoy was largely ignored by African (male) critics. Partly as a response to this silence, Aidoo wrote the famous essay, 'Unwelcome Pals and Decorative Slaves,' first presented in Calabar, Nigeria, in 1981, at the International Conference on African Literature and the English Language. "Most certainly, my trials as a woman writer are heavier and much more painful than any I have to go through as university teacher," she said. "It is a condition so delicate, it almost cannot be handled. Like an internal wound and therefore immeasurably dangerous, it also causes a ceaseless emotional haemorrage." ('Unwelcome Pals and Decorative Slaves: Or Glimpses of Women as Writers and Characters in Contemporary African Literature,' in Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo, edited by Ada Uzoamaka Azodo & Gay Wilentz, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1999, p. 15)

The protagonist of Changes is a modern African woman, Esi, who earns more than her schoolmaster husband Oku. After a marital rape – the scene occurs in the opening pages – she asks for a divorce. Esi begins an affair with a Muslim businessman Ali Kondey. Though Ali is married, he can have more than one wife. They marry, and there are fewer demads put on her. She realizes that his fashion of loving is inadequate for her. "So what fashion of loving was she ever going to consider adequate? She comforted herself that maybe her home-blood-flesh self, not her unseen soul, would get answers to some of the big questions sje was asking of life. Yes, maybe, 'one day, one day' as the Highlife singer had sung on an unusually warm and not-so-dark night . . . '' (Changes: A Love Story, afterword by Tuzyline Jita Allan, New York: The Feminist Press, 1993, p. 166)

Aidoo taught for many years in the United States and Kenya. She was a professor of English at the University of Ghana and a fellow at the Institute for African Studies, where she wrote and researched Fanti drama. In 1974-75 she served as a consulting professor to the Washington bureau of the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Ethnic Studies Program. Except for Our Sister Killjoy, Aidoo published no novels between 1970 and 1985.

After J. J. Rawlings' coup of 31 December 1981, arts were given a new national importance. The following period saw the birth of many festival across the country. The most important was the PANAFEST (the Pan African Historical Theatre Festival), established to bring Africans on the continent and in the diaspora together. In addition, Chinese engineers constructed a massive National Theatre. It opened in January 1993. Playwrights such as Aidoo, Asiedu Yirenkyi and Ben-Abdallah held high governmental posts, often in Information, Education or Culture; Aidoo served as Secretary for Education for eighteen months in the early 1980s. "I thought at that time the most valid thing I could do was to be the PNDC Secretary for Education, because I believe that education it the key, the key to everything. Whereas I do not discount the importance of my work as a writer or the possibility of doing things with my writing, I thought that out there as minister, or whatever, you have a direct access to state power, to affect things and to direct them immediately". (Juju Fission: Women's Alternative Fictions from the Sahara, the Kalahari, and the Oases In-Between by Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, New York: Peter Lang, 2007, p. 182)

Disappointed in the progress of her plans, Aidoo offered to resign but was instead dismissed from office. A year later she left her home counry for Zimbabwe. In the poem 'Speaking of Hurricanes' ("for Micere Mugo and all other African exiles"), published in An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems, she said: "blew our hopes / up, down, left, right: / anywhere and everywhere... except / forward to fulfilment". (Ibid., p. 27)

Someone Talking to Sometime (1986), a collection of poetry, was followed next year by The Eagle and the Chickens, a children's book. While in Harare, Zimbabwe, she worked for the Curriculum Development Unit of the Ministry of Education. She was also active in the Zimbabwe Women Writers Group.

A number of the stories in The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1999), first published by Sub-Saharan Publishers, had originally appeared in journals, magazines and anthologies before being collected in this volume. The title story had appeared in MS Magazine, New York, in March 1985. It told about the relationship between mothers and daughters, between the younger and the older generation.

The conflict is seen through the eyes of Ajola, the seven-your-old daughter of Kaya; her grandmother Nana considers her legs too thin: "As I keep sayimng, if any woman decides to come into this world with all of her two legs, then she should select legs that have meat on them: with good calves. Because you are sure such legs would support solid hips. And a woman must have solid hips to be able to have children." (The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, Oxford: Heinemann,  2002, p. 29) Her legs become an object of different claims and cultural expectations, as if distantly echoing the thoughts of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon of the colonized-body.

Being an outspoken person, especially when it comes to the issue of African identity, Aidoo criticized the mass media during President Clinton's visit in Ghana in 1998, stating that it was made to look like second coming of Messiah. The acclaimed Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong'o said in an article written to celebrate Aidoo's 70th birthday: "Her infectious laughter and warm personality easily break barriers of culture and race, even when and where she is at her most critical. She never compromises on questions of African dignity and standing in the world." ('Ama Ata Aidoo: A Personal Celebration' by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, NewAfrican, April 1, 2012, https://newafricanmagazine.com/3093/. Accessed 1 July 2025)

In 2010 Aidoo concluded her time at Brown University as a long-term visiting professor of Africana Studies and literary arts. Upon settling back in Ghana, she became the Executive Director of Mbaasem, a foundation she established to promote the work of Ghanaian and African women writers.

Aidoo's third collection of stories, Diplomatic Pound & Other Stories, appeared in 2012. After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems (2017) brought together new and old poems written over the course of three decades. The published ones were mainly from Someome Talking and An Angry Letter in January.

For further reading: Women Writers in Black Africa by Lloyd Brown (1981); Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature, edited by Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves (1986); In Their Own Voices: African Women Writers Talk, edited Adeola James (1990); Diverse Voices: Twentieth-century Women's Writing from Around the World, edited by Harriet Devine Jump (1991); Black Women's Writing, edited by Gina Wisker (1993); The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading against Neocolonialism by Vincent Odamtten (1994); 'Ama Ata Aidoo' by Hildegard Hoeller, in Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998); Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo, edited by Ada Uzoamaka Azodo and Gay Wilentz (1999); 'Aidoo, Ama Ata'  by C.M. [Christopher Mari], in World Authors 1990-1995, edited by Clifford Thompson (2000); Fertile Crossings: Metamorphoses of Genre in Anglophone West African Literature by Pietro Deandrea (2002); New Directions in African Literature: A Review, edited by Ernest N. Emenyonu (2006); Juju Fission: Women's Alternative Fictions from the Sahara, the Kalahari, and the Oases In-Between by Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (2007); Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70: A Reader in African Cultural Studies, edited by Anne V. Adams (2012); 'The drama of dislocation: staging diaspora history in the work of Adrienne Kennedy and Ama Ata Aidoo,' in Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic by Samantha Pinto (2013); Transnational Africana Women's Fictions, edited by Cheryl Sterling (2022); West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves by Rose A. Sackeyfio (2022)  

Selected works:

• The Dilemma of a Ghost, 1965
• Anowa, 1970
• No Sweetness Here, 1970 (afterword by Ketu H. Katrak, 1995)
• Our Sister Killjoy: or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint, 1977
• Someone Talking to Sometime, 1985
• The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories, 1986 (illustrations by Paul Wade)
• 'Unwelcome Pals and Decorative Slaves: Or Glimpses of Women as Writers and Characters in Contemporary African Literature,' 1986 (Literature and Society: Selected Essays on African Literature, edited by Ernest Emenyonu; republished in Emerging perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo, edited by Ada Uzoamaka Azodo and Gay Wilentz, 1999)
• Birds and Other Poems, 1987
• Changes: A Love Story, 1991
  - Muutoksia (suomentanut Terhi Kuusisto, 2002)
• An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems, 1992
• The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, 1999
• Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories, 2012
• After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems, 2017 (edited and with a foreword by Helen Yitah)