Things are working out…towards their dazzling conclusions…”
-- Sissie (Into a Bad Dream)

Importance: This quote, featured at the beginning of the novel, is a play on Chinua Achebe’s famously titled novel, Things Fall Apart, about the destructive impact of colonialism on an Igbo village in Nigeria. While Achebe’s observation that things are falling apart is earnest, Aidoo’s observation that “Things are working out” is sarcastic. It reflects her ability to impersonate the voice of the First World, which has indeed benefited in the postcolonial era.

The academic-pseudo-intellectual version is even more dangerous, who, in the face of reality that is more tangible than the massive walls of the slave forts standing along our beaches, still talks of universal truth, universal art, universal literature and the Gross National Product."
-- Sissie (Into a Bad Dream )

Importance: This quote is an example of how Aidoo’s narrative voice works in Our Sister Killjoy by using surprising juxtapositions and turns of thought...