Response to African novelist, Ama Ata Aidoo's first novel, Our Sister Killjoy.
Ama Ata Aidoo concludes Our Sister Killjoy with “Love Letter”, an intimate first-glimpse into Sissie’s vulnerability as a postcolonial woman coping with a feminist’s version of the “Nervous Condition”: the battle between inherent desire for a man and the personal belief that the romance in question would have only proven successful had she figuratively sold herself to western ideas of womanliness (Aidoo 117). Initially addressing the love letter to her “Precious Something”, Sissie reconciles the relationship she has with a man she is in love with and inadvertently reconciles the contextual relationship she has with herself. Aidoo foreshadows both the conclusion of the letter as well as the conclusion to the novel by interweaving the theme of love in all its facets, and language.
Sissie enters “Love Letter” as she would any private space; she lowers her guard to speak without susceptibility to unwarranted judgment by those who are naturally against her and the traitorous brothers and sisters she returns home without. As Sissie explores the relationship with her “Precious Something” (Aidoo 112), it is apparent the opposing philosophies of others have left her divided. She displays an unwaveringly disgusted attitude toward Western culture, yet finds herself doubting, in a stream of consciousness, her decision to return to Ghana. Sissie writes, “Love came to us and right from the beginning, it had a case to answer. I should have been a different me. Then I could have pretended that the differences were not so terrible” (Aidoo 127). She confronts their romance mathematically, analyzing her ideals and in punctuated moments, ponders if they are meaningful enough to have given up on “… love … whatever that means” (Aidoo 113).
Sissie uses lyrical repetition throughout the early parts of the letter, sighing the words or variations of the words, “I love you –whatever that means” (Aidoo 113-114, 117). Ama Ata Aidoo uses this question as a gunshot into Sissie’s discussion of a necessary secret language: “I wish you and I could share our hopes, our fears and our fantasies, without feeling inhibited because we suspect that someone is listening” (Aidoo 115). She refuses to express an emotion as complex and deep as love in a language that she has no interest in exploring the complexities of. Love is extremely personal and individually defined and as Sissie fosters a bitter relationship with the English language, she is averse to thinking of love in any other terms than her “secret language” (Aidoo 116) provides. This “secret language” Sissie hopes for is largely the call to all Brothers and Sisters to abandon the artificial West and reconnect with African culture –to “… make love with words …” (Aidoo 116). She longs for the day her people may truly be liberated, body and soul.
Sissie’s letter becomes a living, breathing entity as it grows from juvenile indecision to mature affirmation in her recall of the Students’ Union meeting, at which she meets her “Precious Something” for the first time and forcefully defends her decision to return to Africa. She exposes the implications of her Brothers and Sisters comfortably remaining in Europe and America in saying, “ … if we are not careful, we would burn out our brawn and brains trying to prove what you describe as ‘our worth’ and we won’t get a flicker of recognition from those cold blue eyes” (Aidoo 130). Black men and women, feeling it necessary to prove themselves as equal in a White man’s world, defeat the purpose of independent progress. Sissie understands that succumbing to this form of anxiety perpetuates the existence of a camouflaged slave trade. Her Brothers and Sisters have become enchanted by Western culture and the illusion of monetary and material gain posing as achievement. Intentionally abandoning shallow progress for a freer and indeed humbler existence conjures fear. They recognize that by leaving the native land and entering the Western Hemisphere, they have acquired the means to compete with those whom they have never had the chance. While competition is one of many catalysts for change and presumed progress, it also exists as one of the prime downfalls of the human condition. If Sissie’s Brothers and Sisters were to remove themselves from the facades of their Western achievements, and for one moment, recognize their unfortunate roles as naïve and too-willing pawns in the White Man’s game, they would more clearly understand and even perhaps adamantly support her form of activism.
In her final recollection of the Students’ Union meeting, she is swept away to the home of her “Precious Something”, and in the most pivotal moment of “Love Letter” Sissie is absolved of all the confusion and regret she began the letter with. Sitting down to a drink opposite her “Precious Something” he asks, “I know everyone calls you Sissie, but what is your name” (Aidoo 131)? In this last line of “Love Letter”, this man is viewed as a symbol of Sissie’s empowered human worth. Although earlier distraught over romantic love lost, she reaches an epiphany: self-love discovered. Her “Precious Something” longs to uncover the identity she had chosen to suppress while abroad, for fear of the White Man learning too much. Ama Ata Aidoo is shiveringly strategic in never offering the reader Sissie’s real name. Her decision to exclude the reader is a non-statement, ultimately conveying the cruciality of Sissie’s message of language and safe spaces. By Aidoo withholding Sissie’s name, she allows a reverse form of dramatic irony to play out between Sissie and the reader who, more often than not, is White. As a reader, one senses Aidoo’s deserved enjoyment in knowing that the White reader will never know Sissie’s real name, thus eternalizing a bit of “secret language” between the subject of the novel and its author.
