Story: THE GIRL WHO CAN

OBJECTIVES

In this unit, we will learn about Ama Ata Aidoo’s life and works. We will
examine her works as distinct literary representations from Ghana. We
will situate the short story, The Girl Who Can within the larger oeuvre of
women writers of Africa. After reading this Unit, you will be able to:

 learn about the life and works of Ama Ata Aidoo.

 comprehend ‘The Girl Who Can’ as a story written in oral tradition.
 understand the role of society and culture in placing reproductive
expectations at the very core of women’s lives.
 situate the power dynamics within matrilineal families.
 understand the strength of female solidarity in uplifting women in
the vastly changing cultural milieu.

INTRODUCTION

The Writer’s Bio-brief

Ama Ata Aidoo was born in 1940 to progressive parents, Mfantse Chief,
Nana Yaw Fama and Mme Elizabeth aba AbasemaBosu, in central Ghana.
Her father firmly believed in the importance of learning and established
the first school in her village. She was amongst the first students to enrol
in that school. Her family belonged to the matrilineal tradition and she
grew up recognizing the female authority and potential. Her parents’
progressive views ensured a constant influx of travelling artists,
wandering prophets, and communal gatherings in their household which
influenced her worldview. Her unique family life enabled her to develop
a nuanced understanding of Ghanaian culture, colonialism, and women’s
position in the society. At a young age, she decided that she wanted to be
a poet and published her first short story when she was nineteen years
old. She studied literature at the university of Ghana and subsequently
worked there as a lecturer. She was appointed as the Minister of
Education in 1982 and she resolved to make free education accessible to
all. When she realized that she could not achieve her aim, she resigned
from active politics and moved to Zimbabwe to develop a career as a full
time writer. She also taught at the African Studies Department at Brown
University. Aidoo’s notable works include, The Dilemma of a Ghost
(1965), Anowa (1970), Our Sister Killjoy (1977), Someone Talking to
Sometime (1986), An Angry Letter in January (1992), The Girl Who Can
and Other Stories (1997). She was awarded the 1992 Commonwealth
Writers Prize for Best Book (Africa) for Changes: A Love Story (1993). She
also went on to found The Mbaasem Foundation in 2000 to provide
much needed support to the development and growth of African women
writers and to promote their work.

Story of The Girl Who Can

The Girl Who Can and Other Stories is Aidoo’s second book of short
stories published in 1997. The anthology has stories with strong female
protagonists. There are various issues and concerns addressed in all the
stories. Most of them deal with maternity and reproductive issues,
feminism, societal definitions of gender roles, misogyny, influence of post-
colonialism etc. Most of the stories are written in a clear and
conversational prose, drawing from the oral literary tradition of the Fanti
people. The conversational writing style of Aidoo enables us to witness
the lives of the characters very closely.

The Girl Who Can is a short story written in an oral style. The very first
line ‘They say that I was born in Hasodzi; and it is a very big village in
the Central Region of our country, Ghana’ sounds like an anecdote orally
recounted by the young narrator. Written in first person narrative, it
deals with the life of a seven years old girl, Adjoa who lives in a house
with her mother whom she calls Maami and her grandmother whom she
calls Nana. Adjoa is a bright young girl who finds it hard to express
herself without being silenced or ridiculed. She is often perplexed at the
duality of Nana’s approach. She is either met with a shocked Nana who
forbids her from repeating her statements sometimes, and other times she
finds Nana racked with laughter over their childlike innocence and
repeats them to her friends and neighbours. Young Adjoa is confused at
this hypocrisy of the grown-ups. Her thoughts are stifled as she doesn’t
know if she should express herself or be quiet.

Moreover, Nana and Maami constantly discuss the state of Adjoa’s legs
to her consternation. Nana finds them too thin and long for a girl
destined to become a mother. She is concerned about the fact that in
future Adjoa’s thin legs may not be able to support strong hips for
childbearing. Here, it is important to remember that Nana believes that
the blame for being born with thin legs rests with Adjoa. It is squarely her
fault for not being born with thicker legs and fleshy calves. The present
skinny state of her legs is constantly lamented as they are considered
useless. At such instances, Nana refers to her daughter’s poor choice of a
husband who is not in the picture. It reduces the mother to helpless tears
as she finds it unbearable to reflect upon her unfortunate marriage.

Adjoa is herself curious about the entire issue. Being a child, she doesn’t
understand what childbearing legs look like and wishes to see them. Since
she is perfectly capable of walking long distances and running fast, she
doesn’t find any shortcoming in her own legs. She walks to her school
daily. It is estimated to be five kilometres away from her own village but
unlike others, Adjoa doesn’t mind walking so far because she enjoys her
time at school. As an unlettered woman herself, her mother firmly
believes that a school education would greatly benefit her daughter. She
wants Adjoa to rise above ignorance and acquire knowledge for self-
advancement.

The major breakthrough in the story comes when Adjoa is selected as a

runner for her age group, to represent the school in district sports events.
The news is met with disbelief at her home and Nana marches to the
school to confirm the veracity of it. To Adjoa’s great surprise, she finds
that Nana takes up washing and ironing her school uniform daily
indicating her acceptance of Adjoa’s new role as an athlete. When she
wins the award for the best all- around junior athlete, Nana carries the
trophy on her back with great pride. The undue concern regarding
Adjoa’s thin legs is finally dispelled. Her thin legs may not support
childbearing hips, but they can enable her to run very fast and be a good
athlete. The trifecta of the three generations of women in the house end
the story on distinct notes of a newly found sense of pride and
contentment. While Nana is proudly exhorting her granddaughter’s
achievement, the mother is overwhelmed at her child’s success and
absolution from the blame of birthing a girl with thin legs. Young
Adjoa is perplexed at this change in the adults’ behaviour but rejoices in
her newly discovered agentive self.

CHARACTERS

After reading the story, we must undertake the exercise to familiarize

ourselves with the main characters. All the characters have distinct
perspectives towards their lives and issues and it would help us
understand their motives better.
Adjoa
Adjoa is the narrator and the central character of the story. She is a seven
years old girl and presents the events with her childlike innocence and
natural curiosity. Her forthright opinions and guileless observations about
the world around her enable us to see her small village from a child’s
eyes. In the small family comprised of her mother and grandmother, she
struggles to understand the world inhabited by the adults. She is
alternately told to keep her thoughts to herself or she is made to repeat
them for the adults’ amusement. When she wins a sports tournament
regardless of grandmother’s constant lament about her legs, it reaffirms
her faith in her own self. She is able to achieve respect, recognition, and
her grandmother’s pride using the same legs which were considered
useless.

Nana
Nana is the head of the tripartite household. As the matriarch, she
represents the traditional outlook in the story. As the leader of the house,
she is dominant but loving towards her daughter and Adjoa. At the same
time, she taunts her daughter for marrying unwisely. She provides a frank
commentary on the social position of women as mothers. Adjoa is
outspoken and has the imagined disability of being born with long and
thin legs. To the grandmother these qualities won’t let her be a mother.
She draws a parallel between children born with disabilities and Adjoa
who has legs too skinny to support childbearing hips. However, her
character evolves with her granddaughter’s victory as a runner. Her
perception about women’s role in life alters as she examines new
possibilities and potential in Adjoa’s future.

Maami
Mother is a quiet character who acts as a bridge between Adjoa’s restive
curiosity and her own mother’s orthodoxy. She lives with a strong sense
of repentance as she is constantly reminded that she did not choose a
husband wisely. To compound her grief, Nana berates her for birthing a
girl with perceived deformity of thin legs. Despite being admonished by
her mother for being a failure as a mother, she resists the idea that her
daughter is useless as a girl. Since she was denied a formal education, she
understands the need and significance of it. Going against Nana’s wishes,
she enrols Adjoa in the school so that she does not lead a life of
ignorance. The story ends with her state of speechlessness. We shall
discuss that in greater detail in subsequent units.
ROLE OF ADJOA AS A CHILD NARRATOR

Ama Ata Aidoo uses the seven years old Adjoa as the narrator of her
story. Although she is a small child, she is extremely observant and
intuitive. She watches the world around her keenly and presents a unique
worldview to the reader using simple vocabulary. Her doubts and
questions about her village life seldom elicit comprehensible responses
from the adults. She is often given contradictory advice by Nana. She is
alternately told to either be quiet or to repeat what she has already said
for the purpose of adults’ entertainment. They find her ideas so
preposterous that she is repeatedly told to ‘never, never, but NEVER to
repeat that.’ The abrupt dismissal comes without any accompanying
reason. She is never told why she mustn’t utter a few things and
conversely why she must repeat others only to have adults laugh at them.
Her predictable discontent at this duality leads to a vociferous internal
monologue.

Although Adjoa might have stifled her voice, her inner monologue is as
perennial as ever. She tells herself, ‘when I think back on it now, those
two, Nana and my mother, must have been discussing my legs from the
day I was born. What I am sure of is that when I came out of the land of
sweet, soft silence into the world of noise and comprehension, the first
topic I met was my legs.’ The exasperation of Adjoa is legitimate because
the discussion is so relentless, it might have started at her very birth. Her
exaggeration does not make her an unreliable narrator. On the contrary,
it is a mark of the oral tradition. She doesn’t see the world from the
adults’ perspective and hence leads to a clearer account of the daily
rhythms of the village life.

Adjoa shows great insight in understanding that her small, all female
family had divided opinion on the state of her legs. She finds her two
‘favourite people’, Maami and Nana arguing about her thin spindly legs.
As the narrator who is the center of her mother’s and grandmother’s love
and concern, she wishes to assure them that her legs are not of any
consequence. Yet, she lacks the linguistic finesse of her grandmother to
make a compelling argument.

Dear student, you must have noticed that the child narrator doesn’t
provide a social commentary about hunger or social issues out of context.
This is a story set in rural Ghana. Since the child is merely seven years old,
she only tackles issues that directly impact her. When she leaves food in
her plate, she is met with Nana’s disappointment for being insensitive to
the famine victims. Thus, she is able to connect with the larger reality of
others in Ghana who are struggling for adequate nourishment.

At the same time, the usage of the child narrator limits the narrative since
she can’t describe her mother’s silences. She articulates the
incomprehensible silences within the context of her mother’s supposed
failures in marriage and birthing a girl with thin legs. She understands the
implications of the hushed protests and defeated tones, but she doesn’t
possess the requisite socio-political vocabulary to analyze them. It is left
to the reader to grasp the implications of absences in the otherwise
straightforward narrative. The narration doesn’t falter when dealing with
the absent father figure. It is hinted, through breaks and silences in
Adjoa’s narration, that he was an inadequate husband although neither
Nana nor Maami emphasize it. The women only household comes to life
with the direct perspective of a child. As Nana Banyiwa Horne says, ‘By
making the girl-child the narrative voice in this story, Aidoo makes the
reclaiming of voice for girl-children a universal prerogative.’

ORAL STORYTELLING

‘We cannot assume that all literature should be written. One doesn’t
have to be so patronising about oral literature...the art of the speaking
voice can be brought back so easily...We don’t have to write for readers,
we can write for listeners.’ (Aidoo)

Dear student, we have discussed the role of Adjoa as a child narrator in

earlier units. The story starts like an anecdotal account of a little girl. She
directly addresses the reader in a familiar tone of an acquaintance. The
emphasis on words enables the reader to visualize the authoritative and
wizened Nana, incredulously staring at the young Adjoa after she has
made an observation, ‘you say what?’. The self-deprecating modesty with
which she says, ‘as far as I could see’ or ‘that I don’t know’ highlight the
orality of the tale told by a child narrator.

The repetition is not redundant. The stress on ‘Never, ever, but NEVER’
paints the picture of a conversation between the young curious Adjoa
and her wiser, no-nonsense grandmother. The orality of the tale makes it
universal. Usage of local proverbs in conversation, such as touching wood
in a gesture of superstition, is instrumental in reinstating the orality of the
story. Aidoo herself says, ‘...I haven’t tried to speak the Queen’s English.
I’ve always tried to let the flavour of my African background come
through in terms of the idioms and so on’.

Adjoa is the narrator but she isn’t ubiquitous. She sees and remarks upon
looks, silences, and sounds of her family life but leaves her mother’s and
grandmother’s thoughts to speculation.

The girl child navigates the world of adults and absorbs more than she
expresses. Her silent remarks to herself about the elders’ ambiguous
behaviours are reminiscent of the universal childhood experiences. Since
the story borrows from oral literary traditions, Aidoo doesn’t reveal the
name of the grandmother who is the hierarchical head of the three-
member family. She is referred to as Nana for the entire length of the
story. The mother is referred to as Maami. They are defined by their
socially determined names. Any independent identity they have is
secondary to their gendered identity as mothers and daughters. Within
the scope of the story, the scope of their character is fixed by the young
girl who is telling the story. The reader hears the secrets that the
storyteller divulges and is free to speculate about the gaps and silences. As
Ghanaian scholar Abena Busia says for Aidoo, “She is a consummate
storyteller. We do not so much ‘read’ her stories as listen to them, or
rather, overhear them.

NARRATIVIZING MOTHER’S SILENCE

Ama Ata Aidoo presents Maami as the mother with small acts of courage
and hushed silences. She inhabits the small world of the trinity as she is
poised between Nana and Adjoa. The quiet mother has limited authority
of her own in the domestic space. Aidoo deftly deals with Maami’s
disenfranchisement with half sentences, long looks, and small acts of
valour such as speaking up for her daughter. She is found guilty of
choosing an irresponsible husband and birthing a girl whose legs are too
thin and long. Her protests about Adjoa’s legs are stifled in the
grandmother’s presence. The absent father is always referred to as a ‘man
like that’. A considerate Nana, who is sharp of observation, fails to see
grievous harm she subjects her daughter to. In the absence of men, the
tyranny is held by the parochial tradition that is quick to assign blame to
women. Even the matrilineal families can assign blame to women and
hold them responsible for circumstances beyond their control. Women
such as Maami find it difficult to assert their opinions in contempt of the
conventional wisdom.

It is pertinent to note that Maami herself never silences her own

daughter. The stringent act of censorship and disciplining is solely
grandmother’s prerogative. Maami pushes for her child’s right to a formal
education. In an argument about the role of education, grandmother
finds futility and wastage of time. Maami firmly believes in enlightening
powers of formal education. Her state as an unlettered woman leads her
to live a life of ignorance and darkness. She doesn’t want her child to be
deprived of learning. Maami’s silences are indicative of her own
disadvantaged positioning as a single mother who doesn’t have the
benefits of a mainstream schooling. Her self-affirmation comes from
vicariously living through her daughter and seeing her acquire life skills
that Maami couldn’t afford for her own self.

Maami’s silence serves dual purpose. It demonstrates her own

marginalization within the small family headed by a rigid Nana. At the
same time, her small voice gives her daughter moral strength and
encourages her to ask inconvenient questions. Her opinions are truncated
and denied by the constant reminder of her unfortunate past. Women
who don’t fit neatly into the socially prescribed roles are deliberately
silenced and pushed to the margins. Adjoa’s defiance is a disruption of
Maami’s silence. She speaks for herself and her gagged mother. Education
and athletic ability empower her to speak out.

AGENCY OF ADJOA’S SELF

Adjoa’s legs are the focal point through which one can understand the
position of the orthodox grandmother, the voiceless mother, and the
young and defiant grandchild. The central dilemma is one that is based
on traditional perception of women’s role in the society as mothers. The
matrilineal family of the three women lives in domestic harmony for
most aspects except Adjoa’s legs and the mother’s husband. The constant
refrain in the house is that of a future problem about Adjoa’s
reproductive self. According to the grandmother, Adjoa’s very existence
would be a failure if she can’t become a mother. In the matrilineal
tradition, it is the women’s imperative and responsibility to ensure
continuation of the family line. While the birth of a girl child is a
welcome occasion in the household, her importance rests on her ability
to reproduce. Her hypothetical transformation from a child into a mother
connects her with the strong matrilineal tradition of ancestors, mothers,
aunts, and companions. Her future inability to do so arouses feelings of
fear and failure amongst her mother and grandmother. Her identity is
reduced to her gender and her gender is defined by her ability to bear
children. Here, it is important to note that Nana’s worry is rooted in the
anxiety of the socio-cultural expectations from women. She doesn’t speak
from an individualistic desire for Adjoa to have children. Her fretting
situates Adjoa in the Ghanaian milieu of her time as would-be mothers.

Adjoa’s positioning as a young, school going child is in stark comparison

with her grandmother’s and mother’s. The generational distance allows
her to speak, think, and act without the restrictions faced by her mother
and grandmother. Armed with all the myriad advantages of a formal
education, she wished to reassure her elders that her body is alright. Being
raised in an all girl household, she values the nurturing affection of her
mother and grandmother but she is also able to register the oppression of
the elderly over the younger members. Her own life is not cushioned
with comforts. We read that she must walk over five kilometers to reach
her school daily. She doesn’t complain about it like the rest of her
schoolmates for she finds school a refreshing break in her life. With a
child’s simplicity, she concludes her school going experience into one
sentence; ‘school is nice’. She doesn’t brag about winning in races in her
school to her family until she is selected to run for the junior section of
the district games. The extraordinary feat about Adjoa’s running is not
her winning but that of the dramatic shift it brings in the perception of
her legs at home. The news of her selection draws remarkable responses
at home, since Nana starts repositioning her legs as something useful.

Adjoa is able to claim her subjectivity and redefine herself because of

generational distance and the benefit of formal education. At seven, she
uses logic and deduction to understand that childbearing wouldn’t likely
be a problem for her since her mother and grandmother have been able
to give birth. Although it isn’t mentioned in the story itself, the reader can
understand the biological determinism inherent in the soundness of this
logic. She comes from a tradition of strong and nurturing women. She
repeats to the reader that she had faith in her body all along even though
she doesn’t say it out loud for fear of ridicule. Her self-affirmation comes
from being able to find newer and perhaps, more fulfilling potentials of
her body.
WALKING AND RUNNING AS METAPHORS FOR TRADITION AND
MODERNITY

Female solidarity between the authoritative grandmother and the

precocious Adjoa is represented by the tropes of walking and running in
the story. Nana’s attempt to first verify and then support Adjoa as a
junior runner for the sports tournament leads to evolution of one’s
understanding of her character. She re-examines Adjoa’s legs as the ones
that are capable of performing other glorious functions even if they aren’t
thick enough to support her as a future mother. She steals glances at them
as if assessing their worth in the fresh light of this discovery. Her efforts to
wash Adjoa’s school uniform and iron them with a charcoal iron
borrowed from a neighbour point to her desire to assist Adjoa in her
newly discovered aim. She irons the school uniform with such
determination that it shines with stiffness. Her contribution towards
enabling Adjoa’s full potential points to the larger female communal
support for each other.

Nana’s choice in taking pride in Adjoa’s appearance and bearing witness

to her feats of athletics connect the two ends of the family hierarchy. The
long walk from home to school and back is the confluence of
grandmother’s tradition and Adjoa’s modernity. Grandmother chooses
fresh clothes from her old brass bowl to walk to school every day while
she sends Adjoa in a stiffly ironed school uniform. She walks a little
behind Adjoa and other children to distance herself from them. She
pointedly tells Adjoa that she doesn’t care for athletics but is secretly won
by the idea that her grandchild could be a successful runner. The novelty
of running brings with it a sense of introspection of the traditional
structures of culture.

When Adjoa wins every race she participated in, Nana carries the shiny
trophy home. She carries the ‘gleaming cup back. Like they do with the
babies, and other precious things’. Running and winning at something
that tests an individual’s strength and endurance is the true subversion in
the story. The patriarchal structures that define women solely in the roles
of wives and mothers crumble by Adjoa’s running and Nana’s walking by
her side. Adjoa’s victory brings her closer to a self-awareness which opens
new prospects for her and girls like her. Her resistance comes from action
since she isn’t allowed to use words that might disrupt the societal order.
The conventional gender roles of mothering are replaced by a choice that
is symbolized by running. Her ability to win accolades for winning opens
new avenues for her future self and marks the beginning of a new order
in which girl children aren’t confined to a single function.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS (QUESTIONS WITH ANSWER KEYS)

a) What do you think of the child narrator in ‘The Girl Who Can’?

Ama Ata Aidoo uses the first-person narrative of the seven years old
Adjoa in The Girl Who Can. While it makes the narration a tad
simplistic, it appears to be real and reliable since the central conflict
of the story surrounds the narrator and her imagined incapability to
bear children. Since the narrator is a young child, there is no
ambivalence in her understanding of the world around her. Explore
the self-reflexive nature of the narrative. Although the young
narrator is forbidden to voice certain opinions, she doesn’t stop
herself from introspecting them. Explore the distinctness of a child
narrator as compared to an adult one.

b) Examine the techniques of oral literary tradition in The Girl Who

Can.

African literature had a strong oral heritage in the form of songs,

folktales, proverbs, beating drums, etc. The verbal messages which
could be sung, tuned on musical instruments, and narrated from
one generation to another form the bedrock of Afante tradition.
Aidoo draws upon the same tradition in her literary works. While
reading the story, you must have found examples of audible culture
in the form or repetition, different structuring of sentences,
proverbs, etc.

c) What is the role of education in Adjoa’s self-emancipation?

The narrator states that other than her legs, the other topic that
elicited divided opinions was Adjoa’s enrolment in the formal
school. It bears merit to emphasize the pivotal role that formal
education plays in her life. Her long walks to school materialize
into an opportunity to run for the district level sports competitions.
Her victory brings a sea change in the grandmother’s perception of
her body and it reaffirms her confidence in her own self. In
addition to that, Adjoa’s formal education must have honed
 Adjoa’s arguments to a degree. Compare Maami’s lack of education
to Adjoa’s experience at school and the recognition it brings her.

d) Discuss Nana’s relationship with Adjoa.

Notice how the tripartite family is a part of the matrilineal

tradition. With a strictly conservative grandmother at the top of the
family hierarchy, and a feebly resistant mother, Adjoa finds herself
loved but patronized. Nana’s fierce disciplinarian is a mark of
tougher times. Her love for Adjoa and her solidarity with her
running is magnified by her acts of support. You must investigate
Nana’s change of stance towards Adjoa’s education and her body
in the light of her generational difference and an evolution into a
liberal matriarch.

e) What is the significance of Miami’s silence in the story?

Maami’s character is provided with long silences, truncated

arguments cut short by a strict mother, defeated tones and a sure
zeal for her child’s better future. In the relevant section, you must
have read about Maami’s guilt at a failed marriage and Adjoa’s
supposed inability. Develop upon her victimhood as the site of
oppression as Nana constantly admonishes her for being a failure as
an individual since she failed as a wife and a mother. Regardless of
her own marginalization, she works tirelessly for a better prospect
for her child. Examine the implication of her silence at the end.
Could her final silence be a symbol of her vindication?

SUMMING UP

To conclude our Unit on The Girl who Can, we must return to the
Objectives outlined at the beginning of this unit. Dear reader, now you
must be able to locate The Girl who Can as a progressive work of
literature. You must be able to investigate the reasons behind Maami’s
insistence upon a formal education for her daughter. The story would
have made you curious to learn more about Ghanaian societies with their
matrilineal structure. Moreover, Ama Ata Aidoo would have provided
you a discursive space to perceive gender as a social construct which is
flexible. Little Adjoa’s story is a story of exploring one’s potential and it
must have inspired you to do the same in your own life.