Women Authors

"Whenever you want to see me, always look at the sunset; I will be there."

"When you're frightened don't sit still, keep on doing something. The act of doing will give your back your courage."

"Tell the story you want to tell. It's a very simple message but it's really affected my writing in a positive way. I hadn't read any book on Ghana like His Only Wife so I couldn't look at anyone's trajectory of success and say ‘this person wrote a book like this so if I write it, I will have a similar response’. I just knew that this was the story I wanted to tell. You have to believe in the story and trust the book will find its readers and readers will find the book."

"But when I'm thinking about starting a book, I want in those first few pages for the reader to get a good sense of who the main characters are, but also a good sense of the tension or conflict that is going to propel the book forward. So in those first few pages or the first chapter, by the time you get to the end of that chapter, you have a good sense of the characters, and you have a good sense of what is driving them, and what is driving the story. That's what I aim for."

"So my books never end up being the books that I planned. His Only Wife was a very different story when I started writing it. I was returning to Ghana and His Only Wife started off with a main character who in some ways shared some similarities with my own life - someone living in the US and coming back to Ghana after graduate school. I'm sure you can see that Afi in His Only Wife is not that person, so that shows you how much my writing changes once I begin writing."

"You need connections, you need to have a certain kind of training, you need an agent, and if you send your work to an agent, it ends up in a slush pile. It was all too much. So I never sent out a book manuscript - my plan was that I would look into publishing my books when I retired from academia. I just figured that I would keep writing, then when I was 65 or 70, I would try to get published. That was the plan."

"The transition probably happened when I was working on my doctoral dissertation. Around that time, I started sending out short stories. Short stories were more manageable because, in some ways, submitting them was similar to submitting academic research articles. So I think it was easy for me to do. But I remember going online, because I didn't know much about publishing or people in publishing - I only knew one person who was a writer before I published my book. I went on Google and searched, ‘how do you publish a book?’ and the steps just seemed so overwhelming."

"An important role that writers can play is in documenting resistance movements. This can ensure visibility, facilitate recognition, and bring marginalized voices to the center."

"My identify plays a huge role in my writing. I’m Black, Ghanaian, and a woman, and one of the reasons I wrote His Only Wife was that I was hungry for stories of Black women just living their lives and doing regular things. In the social sciences, we know—although some continue to resist this truth—that our identities matter for our research: They matter for what we research, how we conduct our research, and how we write our findings. In the same way, I think our identities matter for the stories we tell and how we tell them."

"Stories serve so many purposes. We need them because they document our truths, they magnify our dreams, they teach, they entertain, they inspire."

"However, when I’m able to think and write about fiction, I very much enjoy it. I began writing fiction for myself when I was about 10 years old, because I ran out of books to read. I discovered that I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed reading. Therefore, I think the pleasure I get out of writing fiction is what enables me to maintain my momentum and interest—and is the reason I’ve been writing for almost 30 years, even though most of what I’ve written has not been read by anyone."

"Before I begin writing a book, I spend months—and sometimes years—thinking about characters and plot. In fact, I like to think that a lot of my writing happens in my head and I spend a great deal of time with characters and their stories in my thoughts, before I write anything down. But because I also work on multiple research projects, on which I also publish—so far, a book and several academic journal articles—I tend to switch back and forth between thinking about fiction and nonfiction. Therefore, there are long periods when I don’t focus on fiction."

"In the social sciences, we know. . . that our identities matter for our research: They matter for what we research, how we conduct our research, and how we write our findings. In the same way, I think our identities matter for the stories we tell and how we tell them."

"I’m very interested in presenting the truth of people who are not centered in mainstream narratives. But I’m also fascinated by how we construct our version of truth, by how two people can have the same experience and not only describe it differently but also believe that their version is the only truth. The novel I’m currently working on excavates this phenomenon."

"I’ve been impacted by many books, but one that has profoundly impacted me as a writer is Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. After reading it as a teenager, I began to think seriously about how I could use words to create images and to effectively show the reader what I was thinking. Before then, my focus had been on producing fiction to entertain myself."

"I said to love with your head but I’m also the first person to tell you that it is hard to live like that. It is brutal and it eats at you every day and leaves you empty."

"Marriage shouldn’t be a never-ending competition where you spend your life fighting to be seen and chosen."

"How can I be a good wife with no husband by my side?"

"I knew that even though we were surrounded by a large family, we had nobody."

"I have to fight for what I want, for what's mine."

"Not everyone who smiles with you wishes you well."

"If there was one thing I agreed with my mother on, it was that one could never be sure about a person’s intentions, no matter how kind that person seemed."

"A person who talks so freely about her own life will talk just as freely about yours."

"Please, put love aside and be practical. Love will not put food on the table; it won’t hold you at night."

"It takes strength to walk away from someone you love."

"I use fiction to teach in my social science courses and I am always keen to explore the issues that I work on in my research."

"Stories allow us to peek into the lives of others, and they also allow us to see ourselves."

"Respect is important and something that is very much needed in society, but has been constructed by some to mean submission and self-denial, especially in regard to young women."

"I continue to be involved in civil society activism on women's rights and believe in fusing academic research and 'practical' activism."

"My feminist politics evolved from childhood as I was raised in a family of strong women."

"The work that we should be doing is to excavate, to rethink the very robust and broad ways that our societies understood gender."

"You cannot think about being a woman only from the perspective of being a woman."

"How people experience the impact of harmful laws that criminalise behaviour is directly impacted by their racial, gender, and class positioning in [their] societies.”="

"More than sixty percent of the older residents I interviewed in Toronto were fairly settled in their jobs in plants, factories and the service sector. They owned their own homes, and all of them had acquired Canadian citizenship and called themselves Ghanaian-Canadians. While they still maintained links with relatives in Ghana and had gone back several times to visit, they seemed fairly settled into their lives in Canada and were at the stage in their lives when their children were beginning to enter college."

"Among the less educated, few desired to further their education, preferring instead to work and save their money. As they saw it, you went to school to acquire skills that would increase your earnings, but you could achieve the same results by working hard and saving your money. Almost all the newer residents I interviewed lived in rented or subsidized accommodation and eschewed home ownership."

"It was usual for a man to arrive first and to send for a spouse and children later after establishing himself, although there were also women who had arrived by themselves as autonomous migrants. The former occupations in Ghana of newer residents ranged from petty traders, artisans and schoolteachers to junior civil servants, although there were also a sprinkling of university graduates among them. However in general, newer residents were less educated than the older residents."

"They were also the people who were active in the various community organizations that they had helped set up. Newer residents consisted of men and women some of whom had previously lived in Nigeria, Gabon or another African country. They had arrived in Canada by way of Italy, Belgium or Holland, often with no valid documents (see also Konadu-Agyemang on “step-wise migration” in this issue)."

"This has resulted in fewer women taking higher positions, since male counterparts who have the power do not want to relinquish it."

"Ghana has underperformed in legislating the Affirmative Action Bill."

"And they have served at the continental and international level; yet, Ghana still lags behind."

"Ghana should give women the opportunity to take up prominent roles if the country wishes to experience development."

"I don’t believe that you would find any institution in the world where concurrently, the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrar, the Chancellor, the Chair of Counsel, the Chief Academic Officer and the Legal Counsel are all female."

"Last year, there was a hike when we had a trio of female principal officers appointed or come into office at the University of Ghana. This was the first not only for Ghana, but in the world."

"There are a lot of qualified persons in the country, with women not being an exception. It is a positive thing that should be encouraged."

"I am pleased with how women are taking over male-dominated roles in society."

"We have a lot of qualified women in Ghana."

"Higher education is dynamic. Therefore, the kind of skills set needed by our students some two decades ago are not the same as contemporary times."

"Don't only think of succeeding in what you are doing but excel in it and use your position to solve problem."

"The competitive spirit among the students in my alma mater encouraged me to work hard all the time."

"Because I like reading, I travelled in my mind and got into the world the book talked about. That gingered my power of imagination and broadened my outlook."