SOURCE: Smith, Pamela J. Olubunmi. Review of The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, by Ama Ata Aidoo. World Literature Today 74, no. 2 (spring 2000): 342.

In the following review, Smith praises the stories in The Girl Who Can and Other Stories, complimenting Aidoo's examination of gender disparity in postcolonial Africa.

Writing in several genres—drama, the novel, poetry, the short story—Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana's leading female writer, has secured a place for herself in the Ghanaian literary canon. Here is a voice to be reckoned with, not only as a modern African creative writer but also as an African female/feminist writer. Indeed, her voice, like that of fellow Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah, could be described as the voice of conscience and protest, exposing the social ills of postindependence Ghanaian society, especially in its treatment of women. As she has done in her many essays, she chronicles women's...