The book’s final chapter, written as a love letter, addresses brain drain, another pertinent African issue.

She censures “Champagne sipping ministers and commissioners sign away mineral and timber concessions” as well as corrupt African presidents-some of whom prefer governing from Europe- for perpetuating the destruction wrought by colonialism. To be sure, Sissie doesn’t let Africans get off lightly for debasing the continent either. For her part, Sissie mockingly explains that Mary pleases the White God’s and his angels, who “take roll-calls in Latin” and would rather not twist “their delicate tongues around names like Gyaemehara.” Case in point, before Mandela was Nelson, he was Rolihlahla until his white teacher decided otherwise. Historical accounts abounds with Africans being barred from mission schools until they dropped Gitonga, Chinedu and Efua for George, Caty and Elizabeth.

When a German acquaintance asks Sissie her name, she tells her she can call her by her Christian name Mary-a ladylike name suited for school and the office (foreign concepts)-thus illustrating the expurgation of African identity by Western missionaries. Power to decide who is to live, who is to die,” she reasons. Confused, she turns around to find everyone around her is white, and though she considers the presence or lack of melanin inconsequential, she concedes that such differences constituted the basis for apartheid in South Africa, the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. On her arrival to Frankfurt, Sissie is compelled to acknowledge race for the first time after a German girl calls her a “black girl”. Through personal observations and conversations, she delivers a sarcastic and humorous discourse on a myriad of issues ranging from the borrowed Victorian idea of billing strong, outspoken women as unladylike to white saviour-ism. Published in 1977, and written in prose-poetry, the story is told from the point of view of Sissie, the Ghanaian woman who is accepted on an academic programme in Germany to work in a pine nursery. Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo’s debut novel Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint is an exploration of Africa’s problems with relation to Western interference and testifies to the predicament in which the continent finds itself today.

Our sister kill joy