Aidoo’s Certain Winds from the South: Interceding for the Voiceless in the African Rural Community

This study examines Ama Ata Aidoo’s short story entitled “Certain Winds from the South” and posits that it is a work in which the writer makes manifest to her readers the predicament of the deprived in the rural communities of Africa using a Ghanaian rural setting as canvas. It is the position in the essay that the ordinary working people in these communities are presented with limited options in their search for means of survival. As a result of this limitedness, the men are forced to migrate to the urban centres in search of alternatives; and this has adverse consequences for members of the family that are then left to be catered for by the womenfolk, and invariably, for the community. One of these is family disorientation and its implied implications for the nation. It is the view in the study that the women who bear the direct consequences of the family dislocation in these communities value their humanity more than material considerations. It is equally the position that they are compelled to accept their lot as there is literally no one to intercede for them. The study concludes that in presenting their plight, the storyteller gives voice to these otherwise deprived voiceless rural working people, especially the women who are ultimately the victims. The study is anchored on the womanism variant of African feminism.

Keywords: Aidoo Certain Deprived Rural Voiceless Community

Authors

• Bello, Idaevbor
  (idaevbor.bello@uniben.edu)
  Department of English and Literature, University of Benin,
  Benin City.
• Urhiofe, Patience E.
  (emmanuelpat19@yahoo.com)
  Directorate of General Studies, Federal University of Petroleum Resources
  Effurun, Delta State.