5. This 1972 edition was reviewed with a brief comment by Jan Carew in the New York Times Book Review: “No Sweetness Here . . . give[s] the reader gentle, polished but profound and ironic insights into the manner, morals, and esthetic sensibilities of contemporary West African society.” Carew notes the “muted irony” of the stories and how they “nudge [the reader] quietly toward a more profound understanding of modern Africa” (14).
The first edition (1970) was reviewed by K.W. in West Africa (30 January 1971): “[These] short stories, like the play [Anowa], are simple and direct, being concerned with the real problems of ordinary people. . . . Ama Ata writes with transparent honesty” (133).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Works by Aidoo and Selected African Women Writers
Aidoo, Ama Ata. Anowa. London: Longman, 1970.
———. Changes: A Love Story. London: The Women’s Press, 1991; New York: The Feminist Press, 1993, with an afterword by Tuzyline Jita Allan. Translated as Forandringer en kjærlighetshistorie by Toril Hanssen. Oslo: Tiden Norsk Forlag, 1993.
———. The Dilemma of a Ghost. London: Longman, 1965.
———. “No Saviours.” African Writers on African Writing. Ed. G. D. Killam. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
———. Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint. London: NOK Publishers, 1979.
———. Someone Talking to Sometime. Harare, Zimbabwe: The College Press, 1985.
———. “To Be a Woman.” Sisterhood Is Global. Ed. Robin Morgan. New York: Anchor Press, 1985.
———. “To Be an African Woman—An Overview and a Detail.” Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers’ Conference, Stockholm, 1986. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Uppsala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988.
———. “The African Woman Today.” Dissent 39 (1992): 319–25.
Bruner, Charlotte, ed. Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa. London: Heinemann, 1983.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: The Women’s Press, 1988; Seattle: Seal Press, 1989.
Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. New York: Braziller, 1979.
———. The Slave Girl. London: Allison & Busby, 1977.
Gordimer, Nadine. July’s People. London: Penguin, 1981; reprint 1986.
Head, Bessie. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann, 1974.
———. The Collector of Treasures. London: Heinemann, 1977.
———. Tales of Tenderness and Power. London: Heinemann, 1989.
———. When Rain Clouds Gather. London: Heinemann, 1968.
Nwapa, Flora. Efuru. London: Heinemann, 1966; reprint 1979.
Tlali, Miriam. Soweto Stories. London: Pandora Press, 1989.
Secondary Sources
Achebe, Chinua. “Impediments to Dialogue Between North and South.” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Anchor Press, 1988.
———. Morning Yet on Creation Day. New York: Anchor Press, 1976.
Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters and Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in African Society. London and New Jersey: Zed Press, 1987.
African Literature Today 15. Special Issue on African Women Writers. London: Heinemann, 1985.
Amos, Valerie, and Pratibha Parmer. “Challenging Imperial Feminism.” Feminist Review 17 (Autumn 1984): 3-20.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
Barrett, Michelle. Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis. London: Verso, 1980.
Brown, Lloyd W. Women Writers in Black Africa. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
Carew, Jan. “African Literature—From the Breath of Gods.” The New York Times Book Review. 2 April 1972, pp. 7, 14.
Davies, Carole Boyce, and Anne Adams Graves, eds. Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1961; reprint 1977.
Hafkin, Nancy and Edna Bay, eds. Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.
Hill-Lubin, Mildred. “The Storyteller and the Audience in the Works of Ama Ata Aidoo.” Neohelicon 26, no. 2 (1989): 221–45.
James, Adeola, ed. In Their Own Voices: African Women Writers Talk. London: Heinemann, 1990.
Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed Press, 1986.
Katrak, Ketu H. “Decolonizing Culture: Towards a Theory for Postcolonial Women Writers.” Modern Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 157–79.
———. “From Paulina to Dikeledi: “The Philosophical and Political Vision of Bessie Head’s Protagonists.” Ba Shiru 12, no. 2 (1987): 26–35.
Lazarus, Neil. Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
Little, Kenneth. The Sociology of Urban Women’s Image in African Literature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980.
McCaffrey, Kathleen. “Images of the Mother in the Stories of Ama Ata Aidoo.” Africa Woman 23 (Sept./Oct. 1979): 40–41.
Modebe, Sarah. “Ama Ata Aidoo—In Conversation.” New African 288 (Sept. 1991): 40.
Mohanty, Chandra et al, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann, 1986.
Nasta, Susheila, ed. Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. London: The Women’s Press, 1991.
Obbo, Christine. African Women: Their Struggle for Economic Independence. London: Zed Press, 1980.
Odamtten, Vincent O. The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading Against Neocolonialism. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994.
Pala, Achola. “Women and Development.” The Black Woman Cross-Culturally. Ed. Filomena Steady. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1981.
Pieterse, Cosmo and Dennis Duerden. African Writers Talking. New York: Africana Publishing, 1972.
Priebe, Richard K., ed. Ghanaian Literatures. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Soyinka, Wole. Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. Ibadan, Nigeria: New Horn Press, 1988.
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn et al, eds. Women in Africa and the African Diaspora. Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, 1989.
No Sweetness Here and Other Stories Page 16
