Theatre
Anowa
Ama Ata Aidoo · 1970
Synopsis
In Yebi, a village of the Gold Coast in the 1870s, Anowa has turned down all the suitors her parents proposed. She chooses Kofi Ako on her own, whom his own family regard as a fool, and leaves the village swearing never to return. The couple go to the coast; Kofi trades in hides, grows rich and has slaves work for him, and disagreement grows between the spouses. An old man and an old woman, the “Mouth-that-eats-salt-and-pepper”, comment on events as the village would.
Context
The play, published in London by Longman in 1970, brings to the stage a Ghanaian legend: the young girl who refuses the husbands chosen by her parents marries a stranger who turns out to be the devil. Written after the coup of 1966, it returns to the history of the country and to the complicity of African chiefs in the slave trade, and calls for turning away from the lure of profit. The Gate Theatre in London staged it in 1991, and in 2016 it entered the Cambridge international examinations syllabus.
Who it is for
A play in English, divided into phases, steeped in Akan turns of phrase; it helps to know the history of the slave trade on the coast of Ghana.
Prizes and reception
The Guardian regards Aidoo as one of the most influential women writers in Africa; Eldred Durosimi Jones studied the play as early as 1976.