Our Sister Killjoy Summary

Our Sister Killjoy Summary

Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint is written by Ama Ata Aidoo and published in the year 1977.The protagonist is Sissie, a Ghanaian student who travels to Europe on a scholarship. The narrative is in a prose-verse form depicting the thoughts and encounters of Sissie whose opinion is shaped by her encounter with the western world and it’s comparison to her homeland. She also comes across the hypocrisy and corruption of the African elite. The novel not only examines the role of modern African society but also comes up with the problems of the women around the globe.

The novel is divided into four sections. The first is called Into a Bad Dream where she travels to Germany. Her elite hosts took every care to make her comfortable, from luxurious Mercedes-Benz that comes to pick her to lavish dinner and expensive European wine. She meets Sammy, who is her fellow countryman, whose real name she “did not catch.” Sammy laughs loudly and when not laughing, he smiles continuously. Sissie feels he had been placed there to sing praises of the European land. She feels shivered and uneasy. She eventually realizes that she is the only black person there, though she does not feel insecure or inferior of her identity or race. The section ends with “power to decide/ Who is to live/ Who is to die.” ; which throws some light on the colonial and the post colonial aspect of the novel, considering it was power which decided who survived and who died.

The next section is titled as “The Plums” where Sissie befriends Marija Sommer, a German lady whose husband is never home. She, later on, develops an attraction towards Sissie. Marija asks Sissie about her native place to which Sissie replies it’s Ghana. Marija asks if it is near Canada. Sissie is ridiculed. It was ignorance on Marija’s part that Sissie finds uncanny.

Marija plucks fresh plums for Sissie everyday and showers her with food and other gifts. Sissie compares herself to the rare and luscious plums: “Youthful, knowing you are Rare, Feeling Free and Being Loved’. Sissie also gained attention from Marija’s neighbors due to her regular visits. She was an exotic object and they’d question Marija about her. A lot of verse that follows talks about colonization, discussing the post-independence struggle that that African continent now faced. Aidoo, through the novel, also comments upon the structured gendered roles, ideals, and stereotypes that circulated like, “It is not sound for a enjoy cooking for other woman. Not under any circumstances.”

The section ends with Marija expressing her love for Sissie while she feels superior because of the power she exerts over Marija. Marija comes to see off Sissie, bringing with her plums, pastries and other things to say the last goodbye. Sissie leaves the town for Munich.

The third section is named From Our Sister Killjoy, she travels to London this time. “England is another thing” She says. There were men, women and children everywhere, they appeared wretched. She watches her own people deserted and poorly clothed. Women and children in pitiful condition, dressed up in rags, making desperate but unsuccessful attempts to keep themselves warm. She’s anguished to see her people leaving the warm homes of Africa to live there in chilly winters of London. She does not understand that the unfree population thinks that they’ll do well of themselves, not realizing they’ll run very fast just to remain in the same place. She also is distressed by the fact that they never told the truth at home.

Sissie meets Ghanaian self-exile, Kunle, who believes that the problems of apartheid will be solved by Western technology. He elucidated his point by stating the fact that a "good Christian" white South African doctor used the heart of a black man for a transplant to keep an old white man alive. When questioned by Sissie and her friend on which hearts were used in earlier attempts at transplants, he answers eagerly, "He must have experimented on the hearts of dogs and cats". Sissie realizes Kunle values the colonizer’s world more than his own and belongs to the category of “been-to” who come home to complain and exploit rather than build a nation and improve the conditions of its material environment.

Aidoo emphasizes the dire conditions and necessities which force families to beg for aid and to hope that the prestige associated with being a 'been-to' will improve their living conditions. This can be seen in the letter to Kunle from his mother when she says:

"I am not begging

you

for money.

Am I not a mother?

Do I not know you need

money yourself, and if I was rich like my friends, would I not send you some

myself?

But my son,

there is

nothing here at all.(..)"

Sissie soon realizes that the land treats animals like humans and vice-versa. The section ends with Kunle’s death, his car being burned down to ashes.

The fourth and the final section is titled as A Love Letter, which what Chimalum Nwankwo has rightly called a "confrontational" love letter. The tone of the section is relatively calmer as compared to the previous three. Sissie writes this letter to her lover who has decided to remain in exile. But instead of it being a dialogue between a man and a woman, it looks more as if Sissie is speaking her mind. The letter is more political in nature than romantic. Sissie is a killjoy, who asks her lover and others in exile to come out of their delusions and forces them to acknowledge their duties towards there motherland. Sissie is troubled that she cannot speak to her lover in no other but the colonial language, distancing them, inflamed by the fact that he does not see this as an issue. What he considers a problem is that she is too aggressive, too outspoken, "too serious".

She wishes that she’d stop confronting him, rather he’d now hold her in his arms. For Sissie, her desire for this man comes in direct opposition to her strength as an African woman as she states:

“They say that any female in my position would have thrown away everything to be with you, and remain with you: first her opinions, and then her own plans. But...what did I rather do but daily and loudly criticize you and your friends for wanting to stay forever in alien places.. ..Maybe I regret that I could not shut up and meekly look up to you... but you see, no one ever taught me such meekness.”

In this love letter, Sissie recounts her meetings with the African self-exiles. Sissie speaks out at an African student union meeting. They spend hours discussing the political situation of Africa but do not see the denial of their services as part of the problem. In the final line of Sissie's letter, she recalls what her lover asked her when they met: "I know everyone calls you Sissie, but what is your name?" We do not know her real name, but she is a messenger of her kin to the land of exiles. She ends her letter as the plane moves towards West African coast. She decides not to send it. She’ll tell the tales back home.

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