ASA Women's Caucus Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize

Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize

The 2025 Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize for Scholarly Writing

Co-Winner: Ousseina D. Alidou. Protest Arts, Gender, and Social Change: Fiction, Popular Songs, and the Media in Hausa Society (University of Michigan Press, 2024).
Co-Winner: Joel Cabrita. Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Gelana Twala (Ohio University Press, 2023).
Honorable Mention: Hadiza Moussa, edited by Alice J. Kang and Barbara M. Cooper. Yearning and Refusal: An Ethnography of Female Fertility Management in Niamey, Niger (Oxford University Press, 2023).

The 2024 Aidoo Snyder Book Prize for Creative Writing

Awarded to: The History of a Difficult Child, by Mihret Sibhat (Penguin Random House 2023). This impactful coming-of-age novel was chosen because of its deep character development and compelling narrative. The novel is set in Ethiopia during the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship Derg regime that ruled Ethiopia after Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime had been ousted, and it’s narrator is Selam, the last of six children by Asmelash and Degitu. Selam starts the narrative before her own birth and invites the reader on a journey of discovery about the family she will be born into as well as the society she will grow up in. Given the complexity of the subject matter and Selam’s unique perspective as a child, Sibhat’s narrative is innovative and appealing. Although Selam is the protagonist, Sibhat paints vivid portraits of all the characters, especially Degitu, and her life-long struggles to care for her family after the loss of her family fortunes. Degitu’s health problems, Asmelash’s indifference, the obstacles she faces as a female head of household, and the quirks and foibles of each of her children are all described with the fascination of an innocent child. The indirect depiction of the dangers of living under a brutal military dictatorship were compellingly explored and even, given infusion of humor.