Ama Ata Aidoo’s Diagnose and Representation of the Dilemma of the African American Diaspora in her play Dilemma of A Ghost

Abstract

The research investigates in details about the influence of cultural differences in Postcolonial Ghana as presented in Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost. The play centers on the cross cultural marriage of young couple; Ato Yawson, a Ghanaian who recently completed his studies in the United States and returns home, and Eulali, his African American bride. Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo expresses the consciousness of the diaspora of Ato Yawson and his wife and the final effort of Yawson’s mother to find a compromise. The husband is caught between the challenging demands of his wife and his family, He feels torn and irresolute as the folkloric ghost in the children's song in the play. Aidoo has a strong historical and political awareness of Africa's colonial past and post-colonial present, and the problems facing an African woman in Africa and outside it. She is like a physician, diagnoses the symptoms of the troubled postcolonial age in Africa. In her use of Dilemma tale technique, she raises difficult questions without easy solution leaving her readers to contemplate about. She calls for an action to resolve the painful dilemma of African life in a world of change where the past and present, tradition and modernity suffer a fierce conflict. The aim of the research is to prove that according to the concept of compensation there is neither absolute gain nor absolute loss for with every loss there is again and with every gain there is a loss. Without the concept of compromise the dilemma of diaspora will lead to catastrophic results.