Marija thinks that Ghana is near Canada, and laughs at her own ignorance. Despite her love for Sissie, Marija is horribly uneducated about matters involving Africa and race Sissie quickly realizes that Marija and her friends think of her as exotic and strange, rather than as a real person with feelings and goals. Every day Marija picks plums off the tree in her yard, and she feeds them to Sissie, who compares herself to the plums. The second section of the book, “The Plums,” tells the story of a romance between Sissie and Marija Sommer, a German woman whose husband is never home, and who begins to fall in love with Sissie. Sissie realizes she is the only black person at these parties, but despite this, she does not feel inferior to these rich white Europeans.

At one of these dinners, Sissie meets Sammy, a boy who is also from Ghana and whose real name she “does not catch.” Sissie is unnerved by Sammy, whom she feels has lost touch with his home country and has been placed at the party to sing the praises of life in Europe. The first, “Into a Bad Dream,” Sissie arrives in Germany and is picked up by her wealthy host family in a luxurious Mercedes.

The book is written in a combination of traditional prose and verse. In the process, she discovers the realities of colonization, Europe's effect on the young Africans it sponsors, and how both white Europeans and black Africans have been mistaught about the realities of race and racism in their everyday lives. Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (1977), the debut novel of Ghanaian author and former Minister of Education Ama Ata Aidoo, tells the story of Sissie, a young African woman who goes to Europe to better herself and receive a proper, European education.

Sister killjoy