Novelist, playwright, and short story writer Ama Ata Aidoo was born on March 23, 1942, in Abeadzi Kyiakor, Gold Coast (now Ghana). Her mother was Maame Abba Abasema, and her father, a chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, was Nana Yaw Fama. Aidoo attended the University of Ghana, graduating with a B.A., with honors, in 1964. She later attended Stanford University. From 1970 to 1982, Aidoo worked as a lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. She was a consulting professor at the Phelps-Stokes Fund Ethnic Studies Program in Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1975, and from 1982 to 1983, she held the post of Minister of Education in Ghana. She was writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond, Virginia, in 1989. In 1990 and 1991, Aidoo was the Chair of the African Regional Panel of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. She has one child, Kinna Likimani.

Aidoo was first noted for her play The Dilemma of...