Can You Really See through a Squint? Theoretical Underpinnings in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy

Bibliographic Data

ID9003347
AuthorsCheryl Sterling (0000-0002-6649-8222, New York University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume45
Issue1
Pages131-150
Publication date2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989409359645
OpenAlexW2170744896
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited5

Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy is read as an inversion of the colonial travel narrative, addressing the continued asymmetrical power relations between Europe and Africa. The paper posits Sissie, its focal character, as a site of theoretical transformations, engaging with issues of racial subjectivity, sexuality and political positionality in relation to the neo-colonial African state. It further argues that Aidoo situates a performative self in the text through an interrogatory narrative voice that succeeds in both deforming the novelistic pattern and participating in the critique of Western subjectivity and hegemonic feminist positioning, while inserting a resistant feminist ideology into Pan-Africanist discourse to re-envision the role of African women in Africa’s development

Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Epistemology · Hegemony · Ideology · Literature · Narrative · Performative utterance · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sister · Sociology · Subjectivity · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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