Welcome back to our Book of the Month series for June! This month, we dive into Our Sister Killjoy, the debut novel of Ama Ata Aidoo. As a Ghanaian author who has lived and studied internationally, Aidoo’s writing explores Eurocentrism and neocolonialism and their harmful effects on the African diaspora.
Our Sister Killjoy refers to the novel’s protagonist, Sissie, a young Ghanaian woman who leaves her home country for a study-abroad programme in Germany, before travelling to England, where she learns how prevalent ignorance and prejudice are. Aidoo’s unique literary style enables her to combine narrative and feeling as the novel is interspersed with both prose and poetry. She uses prose to give structure and content to the story, taking the reader through Sissie’s journey at different stages in her life.
This is broken up by her poetry, which offers an introspective exploration of Sissie’s thoughts and emotions, as well as providing her character with more depth. Alongside this, Aidoo’s poetry gives a more extensive analysis of some of the wider issues explored in the text, such as postcolonialism and the control of women. The text details the intricate dynamic between the protagonist and how she navigates through society with a critical perspective of oppression.
Aidoo heavily focuses on the theme of Eurocentric ideology and how it is prominent in both coloniser and colonised populations.
Before Sissie flies to Germany, she attends a celebratory dinner at the ambassador’s house, where she meets a man called ‘Sammy.’ She instantly notes that he must have been to Europe before, as his eagerness to show how lucky she is resembles how you might prepare for a “dress rehearsal for a journey to paradise.” His attitude makes her uncomfortable, along with her foreign environment, which foreshadows her increased alienation after arriving in Europe.
She encounters this after being forced to notice the differences in skin colour around her, which she notes makes her nauseous and regretful. These emotions are augmented with Aidoo’s poetry, which uses an external narrator to highlight how this discovery establishes the relationship between “power” and skin colour.
Sissie further realises how ignorant those around her are about Ghana and the rest of the world through her friendship with Marija from Bavaria, whose ignorance is deeply ingrained in prejudice. This is evident during their conversation about African children being adopted in Europe, when Marija struggles to grasp how this might not be a positive thing.
Throughout the book, the view that the ultimate goal is to live a European lifestyle is criticised by Aidoo, and she urges readers to challenge this belief.
In addressing differing values of African and European experiences, Aidoo also explores the intersectionality of the black female oppression in Europe. Her friendship with Marija largely revolves around food, as Marija shares with her German sweets, which are then distributed amongst others in the hostel where Sissie stays.
Sissie later struggles with how her weight shapes her identity as a woman, unveiling how the misogynistic society values wives with smaller bodies, as this gives them more value.
Aidoo’s poems again highlight her anger and frustrations, this time towards the challenges faced by navigating the patriarchy as a woman. Themes of the power of choice and repressed freedom, and sexuality are scattered throughout the text. Overall, these themes are illustrated in Aidoo’s poetry, which mirrors the underlying and inescapable weight of female oppression, and this establishes a powerful and rebellious tone to the book.
Our Sister Killjoy also delves into the power of education and language and how postcolonialist beliefs have influenced both. Aidoo challenges the true value of holding a diploma, which is deemed very prestigious, but in reality is earned through an exploitative education system which teaches students to be compliant with the status quo.
Her most prominent example of control through education is language. Sissie reflects on her experience of linguistic prescriptivism in her childhood, where she spent “hours moulding her tongue around the nooks and crannies of the Received Pronunciation,” interrogating how language was another means of control and oppression. Because colonialist education prioritises English over indigenous languages, this further instils a hierarchy of language, which Sissie criticises in her love letter at the end of the book.
She rejects the “language that enslaved” her, resenting how not knowing her heritage language leaves her mind “shackled.” Sissie’s letter provides her with an opportunity to pick apart her own beliefs, reflecting how Aidoo attempts to break down the false perception of colonialist education being superior.
Aidoo’s introspective and powerful text offers a critique of the complex intersections of race, gender and post-colonial education. Through Sissie’s perspective, readers are encouraged to challenge their own beliefs of institutionalised power and are compelled to instigate self-reflection.
Our Sister Killjoy inspires re-evaluation and critical thinking, especially in terms of reclaiming identities and truth in a postcolonial environment, and reminds EduSpots of the power of literature and education to shape young people’s worldviews.