Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses

Metaphors of Modernity: Palimpsestic Identities, Polygamous Marriages and Global Capitalism in Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story

Meyre Santana Da Silva

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2022.36.07

Abstract

African routes to modernities have been marked by internal fissures and ambivalences that affect social life and political and economic structures in several ways. In the novel Changes: A Love Story, the Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo deals with the inconsistencies of modernities, asking whether global capitalism promotes gender equity or mainly contributes to social stratification, generating more complex hierarchies. This essay examines how Aidoo’s narrative utilizes women’s sexuality as an allegory to provide a vehement critique of colonial and post-independence policies, abusive indigenous practices, male privilege and corruption while shedding some light on women’s condition in modern urban Accra.

Keywords

Aidoo; Ghana; Women; Literature; Modernity

Full Text:

PDF Statistics

References

ALEXANDER, M. Jacqui. 2008. Pedagogies of Crossing. Durham: Duke UP.

ALLAN, Tuziline Jita. 2007. "Modernism, Gender and Africa" In Scott 2007, 427-437

AIDOO, Ama Ata. 1991. Changes: A Love Story. London: Cox and Wyman.

AZODO, Ada Uzoamaka and Gay Alden Wilentz, eds. 1999. Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

BÂ, Mariama. 1989. So Long a Letter. Translated by Modupe Bode-Thomas, Oxford: Heinemann.

BEKERS, Elisabeth. 1999. "Empathizers" In Chantal Zabus. Changements au féminin en Afrique noire. L'Harmattan.

BOEHMER, Elleke. "Stories of Women and Mothers: Gender and Nationalism in the Early Fiction of Flora Nwapa." In Nasta 1991, 3-23.

BOYCE DAVIES, Carole and Anne Adams Graves, eds. 1986. Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

D'ALMEIDA, Irene Assiba. 1994. Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence. Gainesville: U of Florida P.

EISENSTADT, S.N. 2000. "Multiple Modernities". Dedalus, Vol 129, No. 1, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298000290031201

EL SADAWI, Nawal. 1989. The Circling Song. London: Zed Books.

FEATHERSTONE, MIKE, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson, eds. 1995. Global Modernities. London: Sage Publications.

GORDON, April. 1996. Transforming Capitalism and Patriarchy: Gender and Development in Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

HARVEY, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell.

IRIGARAY, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.

FRIEDMAN, Jonathan. 1995. "Global System, Globalization and the Parameters of Modernity." In Featherstone, Lash and Robertson, 124-139.

LESLIE, Molara Ogundipe. 1994. Recreating Ourselves. Treton: African Worl Press.

LEVIN, Tobe. "Women as Scapegoats of Culture and Cult: An Activist's View of Female Circumcision in Ngũgĩ's The River Between." In Boyce Davies and Adams Graves 1986, ADD PAGES 208-17.

LIKING, Werewere. Elle sera de Jaspe et de Corail. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983.

MCCLINTOCK, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.

MACKINNON, Catherine. 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of State. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

MCWILLIAMS, Sally. "Strange As It May Seem: African Feminisms in Two Novels by Ama Ata Aidoo." In Azodo and Alden Wilentz 1999, 333-361.

NARAYAN, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures/ Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism. New York: Routledge.

NASTA, Susheila, ed. 1991. Motherlands: Black Women's Writings from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. London: Women's Press.

NASTA, Susheila, ed. 2004. Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk. London: Routledge.

NFAH-ABBENYI, Juliana Makuchi. "Flabberwhelmed or Turning History on its Head? The Postcolonial Woman-as-Subject in Aidoo's Changes: A Love Story." In Azodo and Alden Wilentz 1999, 281-302.

NNAEMEKA, Obioma, ed. 1998. Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power in Africa: From Africa to the Diaspora. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

ODAMTTEN, Vincent. 1994. The Art Of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading Against Neocolonialism. Gainesville: U of Florida P.

OLAUSSEN, Maria. 2002. "About Lovers in Accra- urban Intimacy in Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes: A Love Story." Research in African Literatures 33: 61-80. https://doi.org/10.1353/ral.2002.0055

SEKYI, Kobina. 1997. The Blinkards, a Comey: And, the Aglo-Fanti, a Short Story. Accra: Readwide Publishers/Heinneman Educational.

SCOTT, Bonnie K., ed. 2007. Gender and Modernism. New Geographies. Complex Intersections. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P.

TYLEE, Claire M. 2007. "War, Modernisms, and the Feminized Other." In Scott 2007, 519-528.

THERBORN, Gorän. 1995. "Routes to/ Through Modernity". In Featherstone, Lash and Robertson, 1995, 124-139. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446250563.n7

UMEH, Marie Linton. 1986. "Reintegration With the Lost Self: A Study of Buchi Emecheta's Double Yoke." In Boyce Davies and Adams Graves 1986, 173-180.

ZABUS, Chantal. 2007. Between Rights and Rites: Excision in Women's Texts. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804768375

WA THIONG'O NGUGI. The River Between. Heineman. African Writer Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

WILSON-TAGOE, Nana. 2004. Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo. In Nasta 2004, 292-300.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2022.36.07

Copyright (c) 2022 Meyre Santana Da Silva

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.