A Feminist and Post-Colonial Analysis of Anowa by Ama Ataa...

My favourite text is a play titled â€Å"Anowa† by Ama Ataa Aidoo which was published in year 1969. This book was first given to me by my father on my twelfth birthday. Although I was disappointed initially because I was expecting something â€Å"girly† on my birthday, I liked it when I read it because of the moral lessons it portrayed and the language used in the play. However, I got a deeper understanding of the test after I did a post-colonial and a feminist analysis on the text. In my post-colonial analysis, I saw that in a sense Anowa represents the beauty of the formal African society which was destroyed as a result of colonialism. A feminist analysis on the other hand shows that Anowa is a woman who is struggling against the 1870’s African†¦show more content†¦Right from the beginning of the play, we can see Kofi mimicking the white man’s way of proposing to a woman. He proposed directly to Anowa instead of allowing his parents do that. As he began trading with the white men, he embraced and incorporated the practices of the colonial communities. For instance he traded in skin, with a multitude of slaves who worked for him just like how the whites did, his room was also decorated like the British style of room decoration and as if that was not enough, he again hung a picture of himself next to a picture of Queen Victoria. Kofi virtually adopted the ways of the foreigners and after all the mimicry, the old man in the end said that Kofi was, is, and shall always be one of us† (p25). This teaches me that, no matter how a person tries to be like another, he can never change who he really is. The blacks will always be blacks and whites will always be whites. Feminism can be defined as a recognition and critique of male supremacy combined with efforts to change it (Melanie Lord, n.d.). In a feminist analysis of the play, Anowa can be seen as the â€Å"Other† among all the female characters in the text where Other means a shift from what society describes as womanhood or feminine. Anowa’s behavior is in contrast with the traditional roles assigned to women in that society. From childhood, Anowa has been different from all her peers. As a child she is expected to be humble and obedient