Gender and symbol in ''Osiris Rising'' by Ayi Kwei Armah

The novel opens with the return of Ast, the female protagonist, to Hapa, a city located in an unnamed African country. Ast is a young African-American woman as well as a professor of Egyptian history in the United States, who, under the influence of her grandmother's teachings, decides to rejoin the land of her ancestors in a sort of voyage of self discovery. Here she meets two of her college days' mates: Seth Spencer Soja, who has become the corrupted Deputy Director of the country's security system and her lover, Asar, a professor teaching at Manda College and committed in the wars of liberation in Southern Africa. Upon her very arrival, Ast is stopped at the airport for possessing a "subversive" article marked with the ankh symbol and she is taken to the high-tech security building: here, Seth explains her that the article belongs to the secret society called "the companionship of the ankh", which allegedly aims at subverting the corrupted political system, from which the Deputy Director draws his very power.
After having refused Seth's proposal to exchange her body for an easier life, Ast comes across the "other major political figure of the novel": Sheldon Tubman, an ex African-American civil rights activist that, back to Africa, has changed his name into that of Ras Jomo Cinque Equiano and has built his own cult of personality, choosing to surround himself with a harem of four wives and his "ambassador", Prince Wossen of Ethiopia, a former New York drug dealer.
Thanks to Asar's help, Ast succeeds in becoming teacher at Manda College, where she joins a community of intellectuals, who plan to reformulate the academic syllabi of subject matters such as African Studies, History and Literature, which still carry a Eurocentric approach. Asar also introduces Ast to the companionship of the ankh, a society based in the town of Bara and managed by the historian Ama Tete, whose aim is that of restoring the ideals of democracy and social justice to present day African reality. Such intellectual work is continually undermined by Seth's jealousy for Asar as he continually tries to frame him for being a revolutionary ready to prepare a coup d'état.
With the collaboration of Ras Jomo Cinque Equiano and Prince Wossen of Ethiopia, who in exchange for money are ready to prostrate to the Deputy Director's reign of terror and corruption, Seth eventually manages to destroy Asar's life as he frames him for being at the head of the ominous "Operation Osiris", a put-up attempt to murder the fictional President Utumbo. Under Seth's order to frisk Asar's house, the security men find a luggage full of weapons, magazines carrying the ankh symbol and bank notes, which the Ethiopian Prince has managed to hide there, pretending to ask for a place to stay before returning to New York. Handcuffing Ast, Seth takes her on his special observation cabin directed to Bara, where he eventually finds Asar's boat and orders his security men to open fire on him: Ast, carrying Asar's child in her womb, powerlessly witnesses the death of his lover, whose body "explodes into fourteen starry fragments" and "plunges into the peaceful water."