Publication
Collection
Status
Description
"Changes" explores the complex world in which the lives of professional working women have changed sharply, but the cultural assumptions of men's lives have not. Witty and compelling, Aidoo's novel, according to Manthia Diawara, "inaugurates a new realist style in African literature." "Aidoo writes with intense power in a novel that, in examining the role of women in modern African society, also sheds light on women's problems around the globe."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review) Suggested for course use in: African literatureAfrican studiesFamily Studies Ama Ata Aidoo, one of Ghana's most distinguished writers, is the author of two other works of fiction, "Our Sister Killjoy" and "No Sweetness Here" (The Feminist Press), as well as plays, poems, and children's books. "Tuzyline Jita" Allan is associate professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY.… (more)
User reviews
Throughout the novel(la?) the writing rings true and the characters are entirely believable. The book is not at all oppressed by references to contemporary African politics or conspicuous references to poverty and misery. All the actors are comfortably middle class and the real target of Aidoo's analysis is Africa's understanding of gender. I'll read another book of hers after this.
You could classify this as feminist literature -- the three female characters in the story are all professional women who try, with varying degree of success, to juggle careers, husbands and kids in the face of their partners' indifference, envy and/or disdain. The women in this story would have a lot in common with Western women that way. Most people in the West don't imagine African women as having professional jobs like the characters in Changes do.
I think the story was okay, and I certainly could understand and empathize with the characters. The author did an omniscient narrative very well -- sometimes those are hard to pull off. The story did sort of peter in the end without much of a conclusion, but I can easily to see real life turning out just the same way. I don't think I'll be looking to read other Ama Ata Aidoo books, but for people interested in African and/or women's fiction, this would be well worth a look.
This review is from: Changes: A Love Story (Paperback)
Set in 1990s Ghana, this very readable novel follows three marriages of career women: there's statistician Esi, our central character, whose teacher
There are no easy answers: "a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman - including adultery -But in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished."
Many differences to women's experiences in the West - but many similarities too!
This review is from: Changes: A Love Story (Paperback)
Set in 1990s Ghana, this very readable novel follows three marriages of career women: there's statistician Esi, our central character, whose teacher
There are no easy answers: "a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman - including adultery -But in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished."
Many differences to women's experiences in the West - but many similarities too!
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."