House & Garden

Hello Gentle Reader,

Home is a complicated matter. In the documentary "Writing Against Terror—The Literature of Herta Müller," Müller states at the end of the documentary:

 

"I think I am done with the concept of home. I don't need it. I can be content and do the things that I care about. I'm not capable of anything more, I don't want anything more. It doesn't even help to have a home. After all, I had a home, but it nearly killed me."

 

Growing up in Nitzkydorf (Romanian: Nițchidorf), a small (then) German speaking village in the Banat region of Romania. Herta Müller, described the claustrophobic atmosphere of the village as the first dictatorship she knew. Every window had an eye. Every doorway a gaze. Every street hummed with vicious flies and news. Gossip and judgement. Any transgression—alleged or otherwise—would be reported and disseminated. No one could step out of line without the village's knowledge. No one could exist without the village knowing. Where you are going. What you are doing. It's all accounted for. Then scrutinized. The local priest, content to draft another sermon regarding the commandment of loving thy neighbour; or thou shalt not steal; or another lengthy discourse regarding the devil's drink. Though it was common knowledge he had a bottle of brandy in his desk drawer. The oppressive depravity and turncoat politics of the village, with all its poverty, its resentment, its dispossession, created an atmosphere that is thick with contempt. Nitzkydorf comes to exist in a perpetual never ending sweltering summer. An oppressive tango of brutal orange heat bearing down and burning the village. The grass, the fields, the crops, the pastures, wilt into withering browns. To quote Herta Müller further:

 

"No cities can grow in a dictatorship, because everything stays small when its being watched."

 

Through continued communal surveillance everything remains small. This is the reality of the rural landscape. Those otherwise mere afterthoughts of the urban centres. In their insularity. Their smug assured moral superiority. The pride in their backwater ways. Their fanatic devotion to singular confirmatory, by conducting aggressive campaigns of affirmation. The defense and preservation of wholesome family values. The rural is a pastiche of polarized perspectives. On one hand are those weathered and tested principles, founded in theological simplicity and Christian preachings of love, kindness, generosity, and charity in spirit and application. While on the other, in both reality and practice is the complete contrary: the unapologetic bigotry; their reactionary political stances oxidizing into paranoid delusions; a strong sense of pride in their anti-intellectual opinions and distrust; all the reveling in their own crassness. This is what makes small towns and villages stagnant in nature. What residents would describe as a stalwart stoicism; others would define it as stifling authoritarianism. In dispossession, desperation thrives. Every village has a bar, and every village bar has its loyalists. An ecosystem of desolate depravity. Finding no fulfillment in work. No comfort at home. They turn to the bar. An establishment which allows them to wash down the day into the night. Just as no cities can grow in a dictatorship; no person can grow in a small town. Despite the expanse and the room, the unrelenting watchfulness root binds every inhabitant, clipping their wings, and shuttering them indoors.

 

In spite of itself, the rural backdrop has shown itself to have a proclivity for being the backdrop to truly universal human dramas. Authors such as Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner, have shown that truly complex human lives can often be found outside of the urban epicentres. The stories of Alice Munro often hark back to my own roots in the rural landscape. Those otherwise 'open secrets,' the petulant family drama—I still laugh when I think of the reminiscences from "The Love of a Good Woman," when Enid remembers how one dying woman requests to see a serving tray (Munro proves to be an expert ironist), as Enid inflects preconceived notions of sentimentality on the situation, which is abruptly shattered when the woman smashes the tray against the bedpost, proclaiming with spite that her sister won't get her hands on it—such as the familiar venomous dramas, we've all witnessed and spectated at with horror and amusement. While the first section of "The Love of a Good Woman," with its description of the three boys, pulled the closet to home. Especially in the case of Cece Ferns. The quick sketched description of the Ferns home and life is an all to real reality. A drunken useless father, and a mother whose ennui and mental incapacity, creates a home on the brink of implosion. I had encountered many Cece Ferns growing up. Those boys with their blackened eyes; bruises on their arms; their indolent 'tough guy,' attitudes. We shared our lunches with them; tried to befriend them; fought with them. As children their homestyle hell was out of sight. Until one night, I recall, walking by one such house. Neglected is a polite way of calling it run down or a dump. White trash homestead is another word. I recall one unceremonious evening in summer that I was walking home, passing by one such house, when a domestic dispute blew up throughout the house. Due to the heat the windows were open providing the soundtrack to the violence taking place within: screams and yelling of vulgarity; dishes smashing to the floor; through the window a tossed over lamp cast too much light on the wall disfiguring shadows. Not soon after, the son burst through the front door, running down the steps and down the street, the father's pursuit stopped at the front door, his belligerent, venomous, and vulgar shouts chasing after his fleeing son. A ridiculous scene. A pathetic human tragedy. Back then I had never encountered something so violent and unapologetic in its abject abnormality. When I broached my own parents, they shrugged it off with: "the old mans a drunk." That family—like so many other hurricane families—blew in and out of town. What remains sad now, is the lack of concern. How easily this violence was condoned as normal and acceptable.

 

Alice Munro celebrates the peripheral of life. The overlooked and the overgrown. Out there, life plays out without acknowledgement or ceremony. Of course, Munro is a master of the short story, of palpable psychological insights. A writer who has a particular understanding of times passing and its, and who celebrates the beauty of the otherwise ordinary life, in all its extraordinary measures. All the while inspiring one to imagine with empathy, the lives of those strangers, who we encounter day after day, through our shared trivial routines. Even though Alice Munro celebrates the extremely diverse landscape of Canada, and all those small communities in South-Western Ontario, preserved in their family furnishings, it is important to note that Alice Munro also took flight from this same country. Munro and her first husband relocated in her early years to Victoria, on the west coast. When I've returned to visit my own rural roots, where my mother stays on sincere principles founded within sentimentality, "this is my home,"; I find myself offering up unsolicited pity, to those who I grew up with who remain or returned, trapped in some hereditary witch's curse. Ensnared to penurious estates or homes. Rightfully overgrown and overlooked. They've come to exist outside of life. The world had moved on, and had since abandoned them at their meager beginnings.  

 

The rural, however, is not entirely populated by the refuse of the urban centres, spilling out into the nearby countryside, seeking sanctuary within the miniscule. It is true that rural crime is an increasing issue and a matter of public concern; while illicit drug use has always been problematic with these communities; curious though, is how homelessness is emerging as a crisis within rural townships, who lack the adequate services to mitigate and support this otherwise vulnerable population. In turn, however, rural communities have been home to many great people, who found inspiration in their wild surroundings. Many have praised this life out of the way, finding refuge in its solemnity and reflection. Others in turn have been liberated at last. While others have found further ways to explain and explore the world further and all its phenomena. Writers such as Beatrix Potter, Ronald Blythe, John Lewis-Stempel, Len Howard, and Gerbrand Bakker have all celebrated the country living and the rural nature, proving it's not the backdrop to misplaced human misery and unacknowledged tragedy. As for myself, since I was a child, I've longed and dreamt of city life. The city is where life happened. I had questioned both my parents about the decision to relocate and eventually settle in a small town. The truth is and was, it was more affordable upfront, and they wanted to provide an upbringing reminiscent of their own for my sibling and I. Both of my parents lived in equal small rural landscapes throughout their youth. In turn, I think they were attracted to the rural area, not just out of cost analysis, but also out of a sense of never expecting or wanting too much out of life. Everything was tempered with the tint of lowering your expectations. This same perspective became its own leeching curse to my life. Rather than move to the big city, I was steered away to a second-rate suburb. When I had contemplated leaving to another province to a larger city, I was informed that I wouldn't make it. I would be too far and alienated. And so, for my entire adult life, I found myself exiled into yet another form of the margins of life, while dreaming of a richer life elsewhere.

 

If rural is but an afterthought, then the suburbs are meager afterimages of the city. Characterless and charmless wastelands. They exist as parasitic satellites siphoning services and resources off from the larger centre, all the while parading themselves as an 'independent,' city. When asked by a friend, what's the point of this community? What's its draw, its attraction? I said, lower property taxes. Further investigation proved their property taxes were higher than the neighbouring actual city. A friend in horror took stock of everything; after all, this is where I've lived for the majority of my adult life. They remarked on the nothingness. The absolute urban desolation. Nothing beyond grocery stores, and the bare essentials. You don't even have a cinema, they said. Why then did you buy a home here? A question for the past two and a half years, I myself have been forced to reckon with. I've only worked in the suburb—though I have tried to get jobs in the larger city, but have failed to reconcile the commute with the salary—and therefore have found myself remanded here. When evicted from my previous place, as the landlords wanted to sell, I faced the pressure many Canadians find themselves facing: homeownership. It's high time you own your own home. It's time you settled down. You've wasted so much time on renting. You need to get into the housing market. Aren’t you sick and tired of being at the mercy of someone else? These are but a paltry example, of the statements thrown my way regarding the encouragement to enter the housing market. The rentals that were on offer at the time were inflated and best described as 'dives.' Now, Canada faces a double sword crisis in housing, both for those seeking to enter the housing market, and those who are priced out of the rental market. Canada's home ownership dream has become a dehumanizing nightmare.

 

Home is a complicated matter. It is an endeavour one should not undertake lightly. Perhaps, because it's such an illustrious goal, many Canadians strive towards homeownership on the advice of others. Homeownership is even an expectation. One of those milestones one accomplishes throughout their life. It is also one of the most expensive purchases one is going to make. All for that parcel of land, that patch of grass, a roof over one's head. There are many factors which influence homeownership, such as employment. I found myself stuck within the suburb because I worked there, and after following what in hindsight could be considered well-intentioned, but inappropriate advice, I bought there. Within ten months however, my work situation changed. Despite the fact that I was no longer bound to this suburban wasteland, I had voluntarily chained myself there. If I were to impart advice to anyone regarding homeownership, it would be this: a house is not a home. If you hate the place you live, it's not home. Home is your choice, where you chose to reside and settle. It cannot be a directive or order issued to you by anyone else. It must be your own enterprise, one in which you've decided. There will be other deciding factors leveraged against you, rest assured. You'll need work and income. Your home will need to be affordable. But what makes it a home is that you are content with it. It is the place you run towards, not away from. To which I encourage all those considering the plunge of homeownership: live. Homeownership will inevitably tie you down, limit your options, and take up a fair bit of money, through renovations, repairs, and mortgage payments.

 

Despite my regret and resentment with my own experience in homeownership, I like many other Canadians still dream of a house and garden. The beauty of dreams, is they are specific, fitting those wonderful niche roles, one unconcerned with the practicalities of life. Unburned with the trivialities of homeownership. Browsing through real estate listings has become an act of catharsis, providing the fuel and the homes to envision and dream oneself living in. In a matter similar to Deborah Levy in her living autobiographical series, I too ponder real estate, and contemplate all the lessons learned. Canadians, it seems, have been conditioned to dream of a house and garden; that house with its white picket fence, picturesque in its quaint sense of cliche perfection. A home to lay down roots. A home to call one's own. In my experience, it’s a little overrated. Though in turn, with the current housing climate reaching impossible levels, what would have been the alternative for that in-between of ten months? In truth, it doesn't matter. So, we return to dreams; flights of fantasy; to better worlds, and more favourable notions of reality; to houses with carefree gardens, where unburdened and unshackled, one is liberated with a thirst for life.

 

Thank you for reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary  

– XVII –

I imagine the difference between actors and writers are simple. Actors want to be someone else. They want to slip into the artifice and façade of another, and in the process leave themselves behind. Writers, on the contrary, have no interest in being either others or themselves. They want to be god. A force of nature. Both cosmic and arbitrary, moving the pieces of their work with cruelty and endearment. Afterall that’s what happens when your bookish, overlooked and ignored.  

Cormac McCarthy Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader, 

There can be no denying that Cormac McCarthy is a titan of contemporary American letters. Where others diverged into the cerebral and more playfulness the postmodern literary form provided, such as Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and Don DeLillo; Cormac McCarthy continued that great American undertaking of writing about the struggles of the frontier, which remained lawless, wild, and even apocalyptic. McCarthy was absolutely singular in form and style, his themes were universal and questioning, reviewing the consequence of sin, nihilistic ponderings, violent conflicts, and the cost for survival. The wavering between moralist and gratuitous violence into the nihilistic void. Yet, McCarthy never veered subscribed to either notion. His characters outsiders in their own right, who faced with extreme threats, revert to more instinctual nature, abandoning logical cognitive processing, and emotional reactionary responses. This in particular is what made "No Country for Old Men," a cinematic wonder (beyond the fact that the novel was originally conceived as a screenplay), the novel is a thrill ride of tension in the rare scenes of quiet, while action is prolonged, measured, and deliberate. The relentless pursuit of Llewelyn Moss by Anton Chigurh is epic in scope and terror. "The Road," was Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning dystopian novel. Often considered one of the most engrossing allegorical novels exploring the inhumanity in a post-9/11 world. "The Road," is by and large a survivalist's novel, and in typical McCarthy fashion does no shy away from detailing the horrors of civilization lost to a calamity, and the desperate measures they will be reduced to in order to survive. "The Road," epitomizes instinct over emotional responses and logical rationale. Concepts of justice and honour are no longer legitimate when society has fallen into primitive anarchy. The novel, however, survives and finds its strength through the bond and love between father and son. Survival is their main objective, but without the element of shared endurance and camaraderie, the novel would have fallen apart due to its lack of humanity. Humanity is the soul of McCarthy's work, celebrating it in all its freakish forms, as is the case of "Suttree," a surreal and down trodden ill fated comedy, of one man's revolt against privilege and luxury, who finds liberty and purpose amongst the otherwise neglected and disposed. Surprisingly, however, after 15 years of silence, Cormac McCarthy returned with a twin set of novels: "The Passenger," and "Stella Maris." "The Passenger," returns to the sense of adventure one should expect with McCarthy, detailing the extraordinary and complicated life of a salvage diver, who on his latest dive, enters into a world of subterfuge and espionage. Though these are circumstances and atmospheres he is more then acquainted with. His personal life was obliterated by his own father's assistance in the development of the atomic bomb, and his sister's suicide. Like a thriller, what follows suit is complication and dead end. Shadowy and unknown characters ransack his life further and force him into hiding, where washed up and destitute he begins the exercise of rehabilitating, or at least remediating his own relationship with his past. "Stella Maris," is the twilight hour to "The Passengers," golden hour. Less straightforward and formal, the novel consists entirely of dialogue between the titular Stella and her psychiatrist. This form allowed McCarthy the freedom to expand his musings on physics, philosophy, the atomic bombs development and deployment, and mathematics without concern for where it will fit in to the novel. McCarthy died of natural causes, and his death marks a extraordinary loss to American Literature, as no writer has had a career so stellar and uncompromisingly singular as Cormac McCarthy. 

Rest in Peace Cormac McCarthy. 

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader 
Take Care 
And As Always 
Stay Well Read 

M. Mary

In Defense of the Private Life

Hello Gentle Reader,

The statement: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” betrays a superficial and narrow-minded perspective. The perspective of nothing to hide perpetuates the notion that privacy functions as a cloak to conceal and hide illegal activities from scrutiny or legal prosecution; or views privacy as a transactional commodity, which is forfeited to either maintain or facilitate security, both personally and nationally. The statement is so well worn and employed, it is even the catchphrase of the mass surveillance program utilized in London: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” The nothing to hide statement betrays a lacking understanding regarding privacy. This otherwise well-intentioned ignorance will always be at risk of being exploited by both governments and businesses, on the grounds that they have nothing to hide.

Privacy is a plural concept and in part due to this mercurial nature evades pigeonholing and neat and tidy summarization. Perhaps due to the absence of a straightforward definition that allows for the nothing to hide sentiment to continually exist and perpetuate itself in contemporary thought and opinion. Perpetrators of the nothing to hide perspective view privacy as synonymous with secrecy, which places privacy in an otherwise negative context whereby privacy is the application of duplicity and deceit. The cloak and daggers of noir alleys, shady deals, and morally reprehensible characters. In turn others argue that privacy is an otherwise moot point in a technologically dependent world where data and information—personal and otherwise—is the fuel and currency consumed by technological corporations to sustain economic development and growth. Then there are the those who subscribe to the prescription that security and safety inherently requires a decrease in liberty, whereby the citizens voluntarily relinquish liberties and freedom in order to maintain a lawful society. This inevitably and almost always includes the erosion of privacy rights, on both a basic and fundamental level. Defenders of this perspective maintain, however, that this is the cost to keep the trains running on time. Some go as far as to reassure that such measures are always temporary; when in fact such measures are never temporary in nature.

These emblazoned statements which advocate for the minor sacrifice of privacy in order to encourage the maintenance of sustainable economic development and growth; or the surrender of privacy rights to ensure national security and order; fail to mention what the absence of privacy looks like. One of the most conventionally utilized metaphors to describe what the absence of privacy looks like is the Orwellian concept of ‘Big Brother,'. In his novel “1984,” George Orwell depicts a dystopian world of mass surveillance that controls the populace through social inhibition. Without privacy, individuals in George Orwell’s “1984,” are stripped of their agency and freedom of thought, as it does not conform with the sponsored or endorsed ideals of the state. To see this practice placed out of the imaginary realm of fiction and into the palpable and tangible world, one only needs to look at the current ideological campaign of prosecution taking place in China against the Uighur minority.  By deploying sophisticated technocratic systems of surveillance established totalitarian regimes such as China, have been able to increase efficiencies and modernize their chokehold over their populace. This is evidently clear in how the Chinese state has employed advancements in surveillance technology to disregard the privacy of the citizenry and prosecute them in a campaign of “ideological transformation.” This program has specifically targeted members of the Uighur minority in Xinjian, China. By utilizing the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the Chinese government employees’ sophisticated algorithms to arbitrarily determine if an individual is suspicious of ideological impertinence by collecting information from their social media activities, internet search habits, facial recognition surveillance, check-point data collections, as well as sourcing health information. 

The technologically facilitated persecution of the Uighur minority in China has become a real-world dystopian example of what the absence of privacy looks like, by exemplifying both the surveillance conducted by the state, but also the industrial efficiency of the electronic bureaucracy’s ability to facilitate refined information processing practices, which become Kafkaesque in its execution. In “Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security,” Daniel J Solove, presents two literary metaphors to describe a world neglected of proper privacy protection. The first is the aforementioned Orwellian state of continued surveillance. The second is the labyrinth bureaucratic world of information processing exemplified in Franz Kafka’s novel: “The Trial."  In Kafka’s novel: “The Trial,” the absurd plight of an unnamed man is examined: from his arrest, where he is never told on what charge or what crime he is accused of committing; later he discovers the government has collected and processed volumes of information concerning him, and yet he unable to access the information, to review, correct, or contest the contents of the records. Though these two literary references are referenced and metaphorical examples of what the careless disregard for one’s privacy looks like; the reality of the Uighur’s is anything but a metaphorical or literary. Instead, the explicit persecution of the Uighur is a textbook application of both Orwellian surveillance and the authoritarian bureaucracy envisioned by Franz Kafka. By employing sophisticated surveillance and data acquisition, the Chinese government removes any notion of privacy of the Uighurs. Afterwards, they further reduce them to a state of abject powerlessness, by alienating the persecuted from any participation or involvement in how their information is processed, let alone reviewing it. This inevitably leaves the Uighurs vulnerable to the predilections of the government, who have unapologetically chosen to persecute them for ideological reform by using technocratic processes leaving a chilling reminder that these same tactics can be employed elsewhere.

Despite the tangible example set out of what the disregard and absence of privacy looks like when reviewed in the context of the persecution of the Uighur; the perspective of the nothing to hide argument persists. Or in the words of one technological activist: “the right to be free from unwanted intrusion – no longer exists in an absolute sense,” because such parameters cannot be facilitated in a networked world when data is produced and collected without scrutiny. Furthermore, the activist argues that large technology companies are the greatest asset to not just achieving economic and innovative prosperity, but also thwarting hackers (cybercrime), state surveillance and acts of terrorism. Instituting regulations or dismantling big technology companies limits their ability to defend against such attacks, as well as stalls economic growth. Yet, in order to achieve this potential for protective action against cybercrime or terrorism attacks, or sustain long term economic growth, large technology companies require in turn the unregulated agency to feed on the personal information and data being produced by their consumers, as its their bread and butter, which inevitably means privacy as a virtue must be disregarded in the digital frontier to maintain prosperity, and encourage protective action to thwart both cybercrime and terrorist activities. This perspective advocates for citizens (or in this case consumers) to relinquish their privacy in favour of private corporations utilizing their data to either maintain or increase profits, and in turn providing a runoff to develop economic growth. The activist maintains their position by arguing that governments and public officials are technologically illiterate and incapable of properly safeguarding privacy interests, without irreparably damaging economic initiatives; therefore, private organizations are more responsible in the utilization of the information they have collected. On the contrary, however, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook warrants a cautionary position regarding how personal information is utilized to maintain economic or commerce activities. In a speech, Cook warned that the information of both consumers and citizens are being used against them. Cook further explained that the information being utilized is in essence surveillance, where the algorithms employed by the organizations: “can serve up increasingly extreme content, pounding our harmless preferences into hardened convictions,”. This raises the question of whether or not consumers privacy is being disregarded for the sole purpose of sustaining economic prosperity; or are organizations granted unencumbered access to proficiently manipulate consumers and citizens based off their data, and by extension influence political sentiments or social attitudes.

Surveillance is surveillance regardless of the type of organization conducting it, be it government or corporation. The motivations may be different, from the Chinese government’s use of surveillance to persecute the alleged ideological impertinence of the Uighur; to a corporation’s ability to craft a digital persona of a consumer to market and cater products and services to them, based off their digital habits. Yet, both organizations hesitate, or are completely opposed to the notion of privacy, arguing with the usual conviction: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” The reasons for why individuals, citizens, and consumers require or chose to safeguard their privacy should ironically be considered a private predilection; just as it is their prerogative to relinquish it on the misguided notion that privacy hinders economic growth or obstructs national security measures.

Regardless of the rational used to convince individuals to relinquish their privacy, the attempt at a defensible argument: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” becomes a moot point. There are locks on house doors to keep the home secure, but also to facilitate privacy. Curtains are employed to cover windows and shield the interior from the sun and keep out the heat, but also maintains the privacy of the occupants. Privacy is not the same as hiding. Privacy is a multidimensional concept that provides separation of public and personal boundaries; as well as being a virtue that has developed alongside the progress of society and technology. Due to privacy’s multidimensional nature, it cannot be easily discarded as irrelevant or incompatible in a technologically dependent world. Rather this strengthens the resolve to protect it and promote it. Palpable contemporary examples of what the disregard of privacy looks like leaves citizens to be surveyed by their governments, who utilize sophisticated technocratic systems to root out and quash dissidence and political discourse to maintain absolute authority and positional power. Without privacy safeguards technology driven businesses cannot be held accountable to the intangible services or products they provide; and as concerning wield the ability to influence political matters through the manipulation and exploitation of data.     

In reviewing privacy as a multifaced perspective or juvenile virtue, for those who credulously maintain the argument and false sense of moral withstanding prudence: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” it is best be reminded of the sobering remarks of the Soviet/Russian dissident writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.” At which point each of us double checks the locks on our doors and pulls the curtains shut. The world might be right outside, but that does not mean it needs to peer in.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

 

 

For Further Reading

The New York Times: “Why We Should Stop Fetishizing Privacy,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/privacy-tech-companies.html

Ama Ata Aidoo, Dies Aged 81

Hello Gentle Reader,

Ama Ata Aidoo was one of the great civil minded poets of the African Continent. Ama Ata Aidoo's childhood was punctuated and shadowed by what has been described as a revitalized neocolonial attitude, where colonialism took on a accelerated and aggressive stance towards maintaining colonial institutions, governance, and the distribution of political power, which saw her grandfather killed and her father turn towards education as resistance rather then violence. Education, played a pivotal role in Ama Ata Aidoo's upbringing; through knowledge and literature, she would resolve herself to become a writer. As a writer, Ama Ata Aidoo contributed to reshaping and redefining the image of the African women, dispelling the propagated notion that all African women were wenches or poor and downtrodden, instead she injected a lively realistic depiction of the complexities of their existence, and refused to write like some colonial English girl, and crafted narratives that were unapologetically African as palpably possible. With her first play "The Dilemma of a Ghost," a domestic satire. When "The Dilemma of a Ghost," was published, Ama Ata Aidoo became the first published African woman dramatist. The career of Ama Ata Aidoo is one of firsts and blazing a path forward that has inspired many young African writers. This often means her work includes causing controversy, as seen in her first novel "Our Sister Killjoy," which unapologetically destroyed the illusion of Europe as being earthly second to heaven. The novel recounts both the naivete and disappointment the protagonist Sissie encounters in the west, when all the lofty ideals and reputation of west are stripped away. Beyond writing, Ama Ata Aidoo was an accomplished academic, being a distinguished visiting professor of English and African studies at a variety of American universities. For a brief stint Aidoo was the education minister in Ghana under the Provisional National Defense Council government, she would resign 18 months later when it became apparent that the goal to make education free and accessible in Ghana was not going to be implemented. She would continue this civil minded and education-oriented career, however, when she lived in Zimbabwe, consulting and developing a curriculum for the Zimbabwean Ministry of Education. In many ways postcolonial Africa rose and came out into itself with the guiding support of writers and intellectuals like Ama Ata Aidoo, who have worked to affirm a sense of self, as the navigate a path forward, out of colonialism and becoming members on the international stage.

Rest in Peace, Ama Ata Aidoo.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary