Customer Reviews

Changes: A Love Story

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Modern Ghanaian women suffer daily sacrifices, lifelong barriers to their advancement, and an emerging modernity which has multiplied their duties but not simplified their lives. Changes focuses on a three year period in the lives of Esi Sekyi, Opokuya Dakwa, and Fusena Kondey, three women approaching their mid thirties in Accra, Ghana.
In Changes we can see the evidence of a complex struggle in the name of modernity between African women and society, families, traditions, and their own desires. From the perspectives of Esi, Opokuya, and Fusena, Aidoo shows us how such modern African women view their lives, and with what methods they are willing to fight to improve their lives.
Esi, Opokuya, and to a lesser degree the much-suppressed Fusena, fight against more than just an accumulation of oppressive tradition that favors men. They struggle for appreciation of their talents and for an equal part in guiding their marriages. Esi and Opokuya struggle to build marriages and relationships that allow them to reap their benefits of their individuality and their educations, and exercise their own free wills, without making them overworked, or being labeled mad women and witches. The reaction of their families, husbands and communities to these women reveal modern dilemmas for educated African women.

Aidoo's love story traces Esi's distinctly rebellious and independent path to love and marriage, as contrasted to the more traditional married lives of Opokuya and Fusena.; in doing so, the novel illustrates women challenging a postcolonial African society on all fronts. This front is as diverse as the workplace, in hotel bars, in the kitchen, on the road driving alone in their new cars, in the rural traditional village, and in the bedroom. Despite often finding that lonely independence is untenable, Esi and Opokuya achieve moderate success in their fight. Their resiliency indicates shifting gender roles in Africa, and some compatibility between tradition and these new roles.

I give this book 5 stars because ot is an extremely rich story told frankly and believably. The material even seems politically important (perhaps all novels should try to be so?) in that it addresses real problems facing Africa and does not always provide answers, although it certainly proveds a rich cast of characters attempting to do so.

"...that is why we do the serious business of living with our heads, and never our hearts"

Ama Ata Aidoo's second novel is the story of a woman discovering herself - trying unsuccessfully to balance her need for independence with her need for attention and love within the 'constraints' of Ghanaian culture.

What she finds is that Ghanaian culture is wise; "Esi, why do you think they took so much trouble with a girl on her wedding day?... She was made much of, because the whole ceremony was a funeral of the self that could have been."

Changes - the love story Ama Ata Aidoo professed she would never write - conveys the clutter of the zongo, the frustrations of working life in Accra, and the disillusionment of love. Peppered with the uncanny wisecracks of African culture: on love; "when we have to count pennies for food for our stomachs... love is nothing", on hypocrisy; "How can anyone go about, eating the heads of cows, and still maintain that he is afraid of eyes?"; Changes is a delightful trance. One of those pleasures that is indefinable but defining.

It is written without fuss in the language that Ghanaians call English - adapted to suit the whims and imaginings of the local mind. Ama Ata Aidoo flows with ease, occasionally returning (for effect) to the drama format with which she is unquestionably comfortable.

Read this or weep!

I read this book in two days! This was a love story but much more. It was a well-written, fascinating book with an ending that I could'nt have predicted. I read somewhere that Ata Ama Aidoo was hesitant to write a love story, well I'm glad she did. I've recommended it to all of my friends!

This love story is a very entertaining dealing with lives of women in a changing African society. It mirrors the social and cultural diversity of Africans and the depth of the African psyche even in the modern world. I enjoyed this rich, well-written, challenging and fascinating story. Disciples of Fortune, The Village of waiting, Anthills of the Savannah, Triple Agent Double Cross are some of the other African titles I enjoyed.

This novel exemplifies the difficulties that can arise when old and new ways clash from a feminist and familial perspective. Esi Sekyi is a modern African woman who struggles with balancing her mother and wife responsibilities with her career. She is college educated and accomplished in her field, a point that is referenced on many occasions throughout the text. Her lifestyle is a fairly new concept for her environment and she has trouble with the fact that the traditional role she is expected to fill as a wife violates her personal rights and desires. The perspectives of her family and friends support tradition and question a woman's right to focus outside of family, although this is never an issue for her male counterparts.
In her first marriage, Esi felt that her husband was too demanding of her time, and she was uncomfortable with the pressure from his family for her to have another child. One morning her husband forced himself on her, which she refers to as "marital rape", and Esi decides she has had enough and wants a divorce. This is a difficult concept for her to explain and Esi receives very little support from her mother, grandmother, and best friend because they view the demands placed upon her as traditional duties for a wife. One issue is that when a woman becomes a wife society views her as the property of her husband and therefore, the rights to her sex belong to him. Esi's violation is a result of the mindset that women should be submissive to men. As a woman who is in no way dependent upon her husband, Esi has a hard time accepting that she is deprived of the rights that husbands receives so naturally. There is never an issue of his career getting in the way or a question of how his time is managed.
Changes shows the costs and benefits of two different marital structures from a feminist perspective. Esi had two difficult marriages, neither of which made her feel content for long. Her life took a drastic turn when she decided to enter into her second, this time a polygamous marriage. Although she was unhappy with the time constraints of her first marriage, she had too much time on her hands during the second. Becoming the second wife of a man who already had a career and family was considered to be a step down for Esi. She did not fully understand what her friend and mother meant by this until she became fed up with having a husband she couldn't see and loneliness got the best of her. She longed for the daughter she gave up on the terms of her divorce and desire to pursue her career goal. Sadly at the crossroads of her discontent was the reality that she had to choose her lifestyle and had already traded in her responsibilities as a full-time mother and wife for the right to express herself as a modern woman. It was hard for me to see Esi being painted as a woman who will never be satisfied, and that this was the fate of so many women around her. At the end Esi realizes that the only happiness she can have will come from the acceptance of her situation.

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