Compiled and Circulated by Samir Kuilya, Faculty Member, Dept. of English, Narajole Raj College ==============================================
SEM –V (Hons.) , Paper-C11 T : Post-Colonial Literature Conflict analysis of The Girl Who Can by Ama Ata Aidoo
This story tells us about the suffer and the struggle of Ghananian women to find their place in society. The story also tells us about a little girl who should struggle to fulfill the expectation from her family and society.
Ama Ata Aido or Christina Ama Aidoo was born on March, 23 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, Gold coast, now Ghana. Aidoo is a Ghananian author. Aidoo grew up in a royal household with a clear sense of African traditions. She studied at the University of Ghana and became a writer at Stanford and Harvard University in the US. As a writer her works are mostly focuses on the deception of the role of African woman in modern society and African disaporic identity. She wrote many literary works and one of them is The Girl Who Can and Other Stories written in 1999. Biography of Ama Ata Aidoo
The Girl Who Can is a story about a seven years old, Adjoa, who does not good at communication. She was born with long and thin legs. She should see her mother and her
grandmother, Nana, arguing over her imperfect legs everyday. Nana always complains to Adjoa
Compiled and Circulated by Samir Kuilya, Faculty Member, Dept. of English, Narajole Raj College ==============================================
SEM –V (Hons.) , Paper-C11 T : Post-Colonial Literature
mother for her having a daughter with long and thin legs. In Ghana the women suffer due to the patriarchy, having a son is much better than having a daughter. But, in the end Adjoa can prove to her grandmother that even she has imperfect legs, she can achieve something great. Summary of the story
In this story there are two types of conflicts, that are internal conflict and external conflict.
1. The internal conflict-- The internal conflict happens between Adjoa with herself, she has a difficulty in communication so it is hard for her to speak up her mind to her grandmother. She does not know whether she should keep quiet and not to say any of thing that come into her mind, or say them and get laughed at. She is just a seven years old girl with many questions in her head but she cannot speak them up to find the answer. She want to be heard to encourage her to express her thought too often. Discussion
. The external conflict-- The external conflict happen between herself and the expectation that come from her grandmother and how she find herself a place in the society. Adjoa was born with long and thin legs, which uncommon and bad for women in that society. Her grandmother
Compiled and Circulated by Samir Kuilya, Faculty Member, Dept. of English, Narajole Raj College ==============================================
SEM –V (Hons.) , Paper-C11 T : Post-Colonial Literature
always complains about it everyday to Adjoa's mother, they often have arguing over it. Her
grandmother, Nana, expected Adjoa's mother to have a son but the reality Adjoa's mother is giving birth a daughter, who will end up to stay at home and take care of the children. Nana always states that a woman should have a big legs with good calves to support solid hips. And a woman should have a solid hips to be able to have children. From here, it can be concluded that Nana is worrying about Adjoa future tat she will not able to give birth and have children. Adjoa should struggle to prove that she can do something good with her legs. She has won every race she ran for her school and Nana says that she does not care of such things, but actually Nana is very proud of Adjoa, it can showed from how she treats Adjoa after the race, she is ironing Adjoa's uniform.
The conflicts that happen in the story are mostly from the expectation of society. The society and stereotype have a big role to build up the conflict in a person. The women in Ghana is till struggling to find their place in society.
