SOURCE: Samantrai, Ranu. “Caught at the Confluence of History: Ama Ata Aidoo's Necessary Nationalism.” Research in African Literatures 26, no. 2 (summer 1995): 140-57.

In the following essay, Samantrai asserts that African nationalism is a major recurring motif in Aidoo's oeuvre, noting that works such as Our Sister Killjoy function as “example[s of how a non-racialist, non-foundational African identity might lead to Pan-African solidarity.”]

Why Nationalism?

Is it possible to generate Pan-Africanist nationalism from a non-racialist impulse? This is the strategy for Pan-African solidarity advocated by Anthony Appiah in his recent work on African politics and philosophy. But the progressive articulation of such solidarity depends upon its break with its old basis, which Appiah terms “racialized Negro nationalism” (180). A new Pan-Africanism might be based on the contingencies and urgencies of a shared situation, but it must necessarily remain aware that “being African is, for its bearers, one among other salient...