44 pages • 1 hour read
Ama Ata AidooOur Sister Killjoy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Post-Colonial African Identity
Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Black racism and anti-gay bias.
When African countries like Ghana gained independence from European colonial powers in the 20th century, they were suddenly faced with a lot of new and very challenging questions. People and governments had to decide what they wanted their future to look like, what their personal and national identities would be, and how to understand their place in the world. That shift resulted in myriad perspectives on what a post-colonial African identity could or should be. European countries that had given up their governmental control of former African colonies did not want to relinquish social control; they wanted to ensure that Europe was still considered the best, most sophisticated place in the world.
For some people from Africa, newfound independence meant the ability to prove that they were able to live up to European standards and that African nations deserved to be taken seriously. Those who were able to study in Europe received some educational opportunities that were in short supply in Africa in earlier decades and centuries. Africans who traveled to Europe to study or work then had to reckon with whether being in Europe changed them, and whether it changed their relationship to their home countries. Some people chose to stay in Europe permanently, establishing diasporic communities that maintained some African cultural practices while also adapting to European customs. All of these people, represented in the text by Kunle and the men at the student union meeting, had to decide what, if anything, they owed to their continent, country, people, and family.
Unlike these characters, Sissie’s post-colonial identity is still firmly rooted in Ghana. She has the insight to question just how valuable those European educational opportunities are to begin with. She wonders whether European standards are really worth living up to, and if so, why. Despite what some people believe, Sissie doubts that it will ever be possible for Africans to assimilate and succeed enough in Europe to convince white people to see Black people as full and complex human beings. She attempts to deconstruct what it means to be African or European, and what happens when someone does not fit into established cultural norms. When Kunle praises heart transplants, Sissie questions whether these procedures will really eliminate racism or if Kunle is lavishing the white South African doctor with unwarranted praise.
For Sissie, Europe is not a paradise, and those who spend time there are duty-bound to return home. There are legitimate challenges that come from living in Africa, and the future remains uncertain, but Sissie believes in the importance of building that future collectively instead of continuing to rely on Europe.
Hypocrisy and Shame
In theory, European countries are trying to make up for the harms of colonialism by offering educational scholarships to African students. In reality, Sissie sees this system as a hypocritical way to reinforce notions of European superiority.
Sissie sees Africans who live in Europe—especially those who remain there for a long time without going home—as hypocritical individuals who are effectively participating in their own oppression when they should be building a better future in Africa. Living in Europe reinforces shame for these Black students by forcing them to maintain an ongoing awareness of racial categories. It is not until she arrives in Germany that Sissie realizes how people sort others on sight into racial groups and then allow their prejudices and assumptions to impact how they interpret those groups.
For Sissie to receive funding for her trip to Europe, the European project of reinforcing shame among Black students must underpin everything. Sissie lives with the constant assumption that Europe is superior to Africa, and that promising young Black people have a lot to learn from benevolent white teachers. Through their European education, the cultural narrative says, they will hopefully learn enough to bring something of value back to their supposedly primitive, war-torn home countries in Africa. The entire system is thus predicated on ongoing racism and European cultural hegemony. Some of the white characters in the story uphold racism through their own hypocrisy, especially those who claim that they are oppressed just like Black people. They fail to accept their own complicity in racism and expect Sissie to be performatively grateful for their attempt at solidarity.
Sissie meets a lot of Black people whose reasons for not returning to Africa strike her as hypocritical and shameful. They have all, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted that it is better to live in Europe than in Africa, even though some of them are obviously conflicted about staying away for so long. Kunle is the most striking example of a character who buys into the European cultural narrative, believing so much in European superiority that he thinks that heart transplants will eliminate racism. He places his faith in the supposed benevolence of a white doctor instead of even being willing to entertain the concerns and misgivings that Sissie raises. The real heart transplant discussed in this text generated a lot of controversy; Sissie’s perspective does not exist in a vacuum, and it reflects wider concerns about how the continuing influence of Eurocentric perspectives and values affects Africans.
The Effects of Isolation and Alienation
Sissie soon learns that Europe is not the paradise many people in Ghana claimed it would be. On the contrary, Europe is an isolating and alienating place where a cold climate makes connection very challenging, even for Europeans.
Through her friendship with Marija, Sissie comes to recognize that Europeans are often cooped up in their own houses without ever really being able to speak openly. Marija rarely sees her husband, who works overtime, and she does not always like being a parent to her son. Her connection with Sissie, a brief friendship, seems to be extremely important to her, as it is one of the only real friendships that she has. She is so desperate to connect with Sissie that she is willing to acknowledge her romantic feelings, stepping beyond cultural norms and risking ostracism in her push to escape her loneliness.
Sissie’s first significant moment of alienation happens in the Frankfurt train station when her perspective on race shifts, and she carries that alienation through her entire time in Europe. In Bavaria, Sissie is isolated from other African people. She feels alienated because she knows that everyone sees her as an exotic anomaly or as something to possess. In their eyes, she is not a whole person, but just one of a category of people. At the student union meeting and in her conversation with Kunle, Sissie experiences alienation from other African students. Although she shares a homeland with these characters, they have assumed more Eurocentric diasporic attitudes and perspectives that she cannot share and does not understand.
At the end of the story, she is even alienated within her romantic relationship, as her lover expects her to conform to his own ideas about African women. He does not allow her the space to be who she actually is. Sissie finds all of these instances of alienation and isolation profoundly frustrating, often responding to her circumstances with anger. It is not until the very last pages of the book when Sissie experiences her first real moment of connection in the text. She sees Africa from the airplane window and feels a strong pull toward her home, no longer concerned with how other people view her. She rejects the idea that she must distance herself from Africa if she wants to become genuinely educated or civilized, instead embracing a collective, if uncertain, push toward a better future.
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By Ama Ata Aidoo
