Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy: Or Reflections of a Black-Eyed Squint follows a young Ghanaian woman known as Sissie and his experiences in Europe. While Aidoo's story ranges from reflections on Sissie's sexually charged relationship with a Swiss woman to the moving letter she writes as her plane returns to Africa, Our Sister Killjoy is a complex literary mosaic brimming with commentary social. Yet even though the lack of narrative cohesion and disparate depictions of Sissie's time abroad result in no dramatic resolution or simplistic final meaning, it is this lack of conclusion that powerfully illustrates the inability of Our Sister Killjoy to extricate Sissie from the ideologies against which she so vehemently protests. Our Sister Killjoy is not only a condemnation of the cultural values ​​and social structures explored by the narrative, but it is also a damning depiction of an eloquent protagonist whose own helplessness is ultimately representative of that of the reader. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayBefore tackling social issues firmly rooted in a specific cultural moment, Our Sister Killjoy opens with an enigmatic collection of sentences spanning several pages. Dramatically formatted without any discernible pattern, Aidoo writes: “Things are moving…toward their dazzling conclusions… ….so it is neither here nor there, what niggles we have grappled with, blocked our views , cluttered our brains” (Aïdoo 3-5). Here, Aidoo immediately establishes a relationship with the reader that is fundamental to understanding how the entire text works. His use of “we,” without any narrative detail to contextualize this language, establishes a connection between the unidentified speaker and the individual consuming the text. In this sense, “we” refers directly to the reader; it is not only the characters in the text who suffer from blocked brains and cluttered vision, but the individual turning these pages is also apparently guilty of this distorted perspective. It is also notable that Aidoo avoids language that would indicate a specific historical landscape; the line that refers to "tictaques" can certainly be read as evoking the absurdity of contemporary Western materialism, but remains broad enough that the aforementioned interpretation cannot in any way be definitively argued for. As the narrative evolves from its multivalent opening to establishing the specifics surrounding Aidoo's protagonist as she leaves Ghana and lives abroad, Sissie's experiences in Germany seem to work uniquely as a literary basis for the destabilizing perceptions of Western culture that permeate the text. One particularly illustrative passage takes place just before Marija, an acquaintance of Sissie's, attempts an awkward sexual advance. As Sissie searches for a way to leave Marija's house and return to her hostel, she becomes aware of her surroundings, "a world where the need to pay mortgages and go on vacation [leaves] the marital rooms empty for the 'inspection of foreigners'. » (62). Here, the anonymous narrator launches a powerful assault on the traditional conception of marriage; While the mention of mortgages might relegate this passage to a simplistic, if elegant, denunciation of the challenges of financial necessity, the reference to “the need…to go on vacation” is particularly compelling. In this formulation, Marija's husband israrely at home because he strives to live up to the common-sense notion of marriage, in which vacations are supposed to be a necessity, to the point that it limits and undermines his actual marriage. In other words, the ideology of marriage directly hinders the reality of marriage. This selection is by no means unique in Our Sister Killjoy, rather it is notable in that it serves as a good example of many similar asides throughout the narrative that focuses on a wide range of topics, ranging from empty from academic institutions to the infinite complexities of postcolonial Africa. Additionally, the reference to Sissie as an “outsider” is particularly relevant to this discussion; it is precisely this Otherness that allows him to identify the hypocrisies of the ideology of marriage. Although Sissie's role as an outsider in Europe is integral to her ability to function outside of the ideologies in which Marija exists, this unique position in no way frees Sissie from the values ​​or institutions that inform her perception. Louis Althusser, a Marxist critic whose influential essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" had a notable effect on modern literary criticism, argues that all individuals are subjects within and of ideology (Belsey 54) . Although specific ideologies may vary greatly depending on cultural or historical context, each individual is always and already a subject (Belsey 54). Although this characterization of Althusserian conception of ideology is quite simplistic, Althusser's general theoretical framework is useful for understanding Sissie's complex social position; like Marija, Sissie is also immersed in a number of ideologies that she herself cannot identify, but because the narrative perspective remains centered on Sissie, the reader, much like Sissie, is limited to critiquing foreign and identifiable ideologies . Although Aidoo's efforts to create a protagonist who somehow transcends the ideology-subject dialectic are undoubtedly valiant (an obvious example of this is the author's constant play with the nature of the name of Sissie), she is ultimately unable to disentangle her character, and consequently the reader, from the omnipresence of ideology. Although Sissie is also inextricably entangled in systems of thought similar to those she critiques, it would be difficult to conclusively locate and identify them since the reader is also limited to these ideologies. Although Aidoo presents perspectives that attempt to counter many common-sense notions, notable examples being the value of education or the nobility of Western medicine, these arguments are also rooted in specific ideologies, albeit more difficult to appoint. Yet the overarching point remains: Sissie's strangeness allows her to deconstruct ideologies to which she does not subscribe, and yet she is as much a subject as Marija or any other character in the text. In this sense, Sissie's only power is her ability to articulate and communicate the flaws in these notions. Aidoo seems to recognize this implicitly in the final moments of the text, as Sissie rereads a letter she has just finished composing. Aidoo writes: “[Sissie] was never going to post the letter. Once it was written, it was written… There was no need to mail it. It wasn’t necessary” (Aidoo 133). In the context of this discussion, this small decision seems to reframe the entire text; Sissie is incapable of changing the reality she so desperately critiques, because by destabilizing dominant Western ideologies, she only perpetuates others. Here, if any meaning or purpose exists in Aidoo's work, it lies only in the.