February 23, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor

A Focus on World Literature

I came across Kenyan author, Okwiri Oduor’s Things They Lost in 2022 while perusing OneWorld Publications, one of my favourite indie publishers. Their books are described as:

“emotionally engaging stories with strong narratives and distinctive voices. In addition to being beautifully written, we hope our novels play their part in introducing the reader to a different culture or an interesting historical period/event, and deeply explore the human condition in all its vagaries”

Some of the wonderful books they have published that I have read and reviewed are Ugandan author, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu and The First Woman, Russian author Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha, Lebanese author Hoda Barakat’s Voices of the Lost, Iraqi author Shahad Al Rawi’s The Baghdad Clock and Korean author Sun-mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.

Otherworldly Surrealism that Feels Real

Things They Lost is a coming-of-age tale of a young girl who is highly intuitive and sensitive to other spiritual dimensions. She has always been aware of the presence of entities that may not be apparent to others, although some of the women around her also have perceptive abilities.

I absolutely loved this novel and was pulled in by the narrative voice immediately. It was one that gave me a frisson of excitement very early on, that feeling of having encountered an author that might become a favourite, their assured use of language above and beyond the norm.

Ayosa Ataraxis Brown is a character that is going to stay with me for a long time. She is 12 years old and lives virtually alone in a large house that has passed down the family since the English woman Mabel Brown first arrived and built a house and employed enough people to call the surrounding area Mabel Town. It has now evolved into the more aptly named Mapeli Town.

It was not so much a deformation as an emancipation, for the name had softened, and could wedge itself better in the townspeople’s mouths. Mabel Town had belonged to the Englishwoman, but Mapeli Town was theirs.

Poetry, Death News, Snatchers

Ayosa, the great grand daughter of Mabel now lives in the big house. Her expanded awareness is a necessary trait for her survival, when it is difficult to tell whether the person standing in front of you is real and kind, or a wraith that has sussed out your innermost desire, used as a lure to snatch you. The Fatunas who dwell upstairs keep her company and at times make the whole house shake.

Bush transistor radio receiver Type TR82B, c. 1960 (receiver) by Bush

The radio keeps her and the townsfolk company. Radio man reads the death news while Ms. Temperance recites a daily poem; violence has been known to occur when she missed a day, so important is the daily poem to the welfare of this community. It helps them deal with the things that have happened.

She also keeps a notebook and jots things down, about what it’s like for her as a girl. Of memories, things remembered from the Yonder Days.

She said, I wish it were true.

You wish what were true?
That you could remember me as a girl. There are things I cannot tell you with my own mouth. I wish you could have been there to see them yourself.

Ayosa said nothing. In her notebook, she wrote, I was there.

Jolly anna ha-ha-ha

The prose is magical, how to even describe it, reading Okwiri Obuor is to enter into another world, her rich, vibrant, incantatory prose doesn’t just shine, it is deeply invested in portraying the day to day presence and effect of abandonment by the mother.

Certain repetitions of phrases and words create the girls own vernacular and familiarise the reader with their linguistic world. There is mystery throughout, we are at the edge of knowing, the more we read, the more questions we have, trying to understand and interpret through these young all seeing eyes.

Her mama had an outside life and an inside life. In the outside life, she was Nabumbo Promise Brown. Daughter of Lola Freedom. Sister of Rosette Brown. Granddaughter of Mabel Brown. But in the inside life she was none of those things. She was Another Person. She lived in a tree hollow, inside a red city. She was a beggar and a thief. She robbed and plundered and murdered.

There but Not There, A Peculiar Absence

It is never entirely clear what ails her mother, sometimes absent, sometimes there, but not there. Ayosa has been aware of her mother since before she was born, when she was a mere wriggling thing. She is able to remember things that happened before.

That was how it was. Mamas left. Daughters waited. Was that why Mamas birthed daughters – so there would always be someone in the world devastated with desire for them?

Ayosa is one in a line of daughters who have been abandoned, of those who have continued the pattern; this is her coming-of-age story, this all-seeing girl, how she lives, what she sees, what nurtures and nourishes her in the absence of mother.

Along the way, we meet a host of entertaining characters, woman who stand in on occasion for the absent mother, the reliable Madame Apothecary and her granddaughter Temerity, the mysterious Sindano in her empty cafe, so while we are concerned for Ayosa, it is reassuring to know there is a community nearby.

Friendship and Sisterhood

Through her burgeoning friendship and connection with Mbiu – with her horse Magnolia, that pulls a pockmarked Volkswagon – she has the opportunity to break free of her self-imposed entrapment, despite the maternal protectiveness that has developed in her as a result of all she has experienced until now.

Okwiri Oyuor succeeds in making the reader see through the perspective of young protagonist, we are forced to let go of our own version of reality and accept Ayosa’s, to see and understand as she does. Some will read this and interpret it as magic realism, but for me it felt realistic, like stepping into the mind of a well-developed and highly sensitive imagination, attuned to their local environment and cultural heritage, their ancestral connections, to realms beyond the physical – it seems that the absence of one (the mother) creates the opportunity for the elevated development of the other.

This is a journey of the soul, of the many lives already lived, of those met along the way in this one precious life, of overcoming challenges and learning to stand up to what is no longer acceptable. Written in mesmerizing poetic prose, that pulls you into a magical, if somewhat fearful world, until the devotion of female friendship liberates all.

Highly Recommended. Will Be One of My Favourites of 2023.

Okwiri Oduor, Author

Okwiri Oduor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. At the age of 25, she won the Caine Prize for African Writing 2014 for her story ‘My Father’s Head’. Later that year, she was named on the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of 39 African writers under 40 who would define trends in African literature.

She has been a MacDowell Colony fellow, and she received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has a story forthcoming in Granta.

Things They Lost is her debut novel and was long listed for the Dylan Thomas Award 2023. She currently lives in Germany.

Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah

A young man grows up with his mother on the island of Zanzibar, without knowing his father.

Nobel Prize Literature 2021 fiction Some years later he is given a chance to study in England, by a family friend who is a strict disciplinarian, ensuring he succeeds in his studies. He discovers how much more difficult life can be when he becomes independent and no longer has the encouragement of his fellow countryman to push him.

“I began to understand how Ahmed had protected me, and how frightening England really was…In no time at all after I moved, I was overcome by the enormity of my abandonment, like someone weeping in a crowd.

I was astonished by the sudden surge of loneliness and terror I felt when I realized how stranded I was in this hostile place, that I did not know how to speak to people and win them over to me,that the bank, the canteen, the supermarket, the dark streets seemed so intimidating, and that I could not return from where I came – that, as I then thought, I had lost everything.Then Emma came and filled my life. I can’t describe that.”

The novel opens with the following lines that say much about our protagonist and are a reference to twin themes of memory and identity that thread throughout the narrative and an ever present silence, his accomplice.

“I have found myself leaning heavily on this pain. At first I tried to silence it, thinking it would go and leave me to my agitated content. That it would linger for a season, a firm reminder of the disquiet that lurks and coils below the surface of the stubbornly self-gratifying vision of our lives. Far from going, it became more clear, more precisely located, concrete, an object that occupied space within me, cockroachy, dark and intimate, emitting thick, stinking fumes that reeked of loneliness and terror. When I woke up in the morning, I groped for it, then sighed with plunging recognition as I felt it stirring inside me, alive and well.”

We meet him in middle age, when he is sensing this pain; the doctor will tell him his heart is buggered, informing him of the susceptibility of Afro-Caribbean’s to numerous complaints. And so to the first of his many silences, to the proliferation of thoughts never spoken, used as a tool to protect himself from racism and prejudice.

“Of course, after all this drama I did not have the heart to tell him that I was not Afro-Caribbean, or any kind of Caribbean, not even anything to do with the Atlantic – strictly an Indian ocean lad, Muslim, orthodox Sunni by upbringing, Wahhabi by association and still unable to escape the consequences of those early constructions.”

He had been surprised by Emma’s interest in him. They had become a couple and a had a child together. Amelia, now a teenager whom he is barely able to relate to. He has become a disappointment to her without understanding why.

Due to Emma’s rebelliousness against her middle class, conventional parents, they had never married. Our unnamed narrator never complained about this situation, he was beyond the reproach of his own culture, a place she had never visited, a culture his daughter knew nothing of.

Encounters with Emma’s parents predictably demonstrated racism, ignorance and insensitivity, as might be expected from an older generation when one culture or race encountered another, having had little or nothing to do them in the past – or worse – having lived and worked in a way where they had deemed themselves superior, as if it were an accepted fact.

“Murmur audibly, smile brightly, say nothing. In general that did not seem to me at the time to be a contemptible philosophy, and there were many occasions when I rebuked myself for failing to live by it more consistently. I felt Emma watching me, waiting for me to take offence about something. I had been well primed for this, to expect to be offended by something her parents were bound to say, or imply, or disguise in an apparently innocent commonplace.”

Our narrator observes everything with a mild sense of detachment, he is curious but not judgmental. He often thinks of things he could have said, should have said, but didn’t. His silence will have consequences. He uses them as a pause or space between the past and present, a void that sets him on a collision course with reality, resulting in disappointment and self-deception.

The narrative voice comes across like he is explaining things to to the uninitiated, to others also not from England, to the outsider; perhaps as a warning, not to do as he has done.

“So I went to see my doctor in the end. I became afraid for my pitiful life and went to see my doctor. You can say that in England. My doctor. Here everyone has a doctor all to themselves.”

His observations of the nuances of the cross-cultural, inter-racial relationship are bittersweet. Following fond memories of a holiday in the lake district where they read poetry and take long walks, he ponders the moment things changed with his daughter.

I have photographs of that time and I know I don’t imagine the impossible contentment they portray.

Then she grew up, I suppose. She spoke to her mother about things that she must have thought I would not be able to help her with.It was predictable, but it was also oddly painful. She wanted to do things differently, in ways that seemed strange to me, and when I said this to her I felt a distance growing between us. I suppose I was slow to realize that she did not want to be treated as a beloved child any more, who would listen avidly to my wise thoughts and advice and then change her plans accordingly. So the first time she shouted angrily at me, I cried. I remember her distress then, but perhaps there was nothing either of us knew how to do to prevent the distance growing. Maybe it was more my fault then hers, because I was slow to learn to make room for her, to withdraw gracefully and with affection. And the distance grew into a habit, with only moments of fondness breaking into the hurtful watchfulness.

Photo by Charl Durand on Pexels.com

Due to the political situation in Zanzibar, it is 20 years before he returns. He has not told his family about his personal life in England. His relationship with Emma is increasingly difficult, as they fall into patterns they seem not to be able to extract themselves from.

When he returns home, he finds that little has changed. His family set about doing what they have always done, intervening. Though he knows he probably won’t go along with anything they are arranging for him, he allows situations to progress further than they should, given his circumstance. It will require him to be more present and to do more than just observe what is happening around him, he ought to take action he tells himself, before things get out of control.

It is a recognition of heightened awareness, the consequence of which is a loss, an understanding, whose price is to live in the ‘in-between’, to make one continually ponder who they really are, to where they belong.

Brilliantly told, observed and felt. Gurnah’s portrayal of the unnamed narrator is insightful, and realistic, capturing what it might feel like to be trapped between two cultures, with a foot in each camp, neither quite belonging to one or other, seeing through them both, existing in a kind of no man’s land, a threshold that many occupy, though rarely under the exact same circumstance.

The way the novel ends feels realistic, it leaves some of the story to the reader’s imagination, it reminds us of how many different combinations of circumstances exist with people being born and/or raised in cultures not of their parents, or marrying across cultures.

“Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking. This can make him bleak and uncompromising, at the same time as he follows the fates of individuals with great compassion and unbending commitment. His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world. In Gurnah’s literary universe, everything is shifting – memories, names, identities.” Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee

I loved the novel, it was a 5 star read for me, highly recommended, I hope to read By The Sea next.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Author

Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the UK in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.

After liberation from British colonial rule in December 1963, Zanzibar went through a revolution which led to oppression and persecution of citizens of Arab origin; massacres occurred. Gurnah belonged to the victimised ethnic group and after finishing school was forced to leave his family and flee the country, by then the newly formed Republic of Tanzania. He was eighteen years old. He did not return until 1984.

Gurnah has published ten novels and a number of short stories. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work. He began writing as a 21-year-old in English exile, and even though Swahili was his first language, English became his literary tool. In his work, he consciously breaks with convention, upending the colonial perspective to highlight that of the indigenous populations.

Memory of Departure (1987) Pilgrims Way (1988) Dottie (1990) Paradise (1994) Admiring Silence (1996) By the Sea (2001) Desertion (2005) The Last Gift (2011) Gravel Heart (2017) Afterlives (2020)

Dear Senthuran, A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

This was an interesting follow up to the fiction/auto-fiction debut novel Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, which I thought was a stunning and original book, an unforgettable read.

Dear Senthuran is a collection of letters to what we might call Emezi’s inner circle, past and present.
Emezi was raised in Nigeria and is of Nigerian/Malaysian heritage; they are an ogbanje, a non-human Black spirit being, currently incarnated in human form.

If you read Freshwater, you understand the basis from which this comes from, the overlapping realities they inhabit.

I live there, inhabiting simultaneous realities that are usually considered mutually exclusive. What can we call the dysphoria experienced by spirits who find themselves embodied in human form?

The memoir is thus a record of the period in their life leading up to the publication of that debut novel, of a year spent in an MFA program and both the highs and lows of that experience. It is about world-bending, living in a way that is true to who they are, thus rather than being flexible to how the world works, it is like the opposite, bending the world to meet them.

Emezi lives in America but is not of that culture and it shows in this work, in how confident and fearless they come across, which is one of the reasons it was difficult to align with their student peers, many of whom held much self-doubt regarding their writing ability and expectations, common to their culture of origin.

I call this a culture because that’s what it was. I’ve seen it in several places: people bonding over insecurities and self-deprecation, constantly saying they didn’t think their work was good, looking to the faculty for validation, someone to tell them they were real writers, to give them direction and guidance and a map to where they wanted to go. Institutions love that, I think. It makes you need them. And all those feelings are valid, but the resentment and hostility when you don’t play along, when you don’t shit on your own work, when you don’t wear doubt like a blanket around your shoulders? That’s the part I have a problem with. It reminds me of that thing back home where people want you to “humble yourself” and sometimes their demand is quiet, sometimes it’s blatant, but either way, they make sure you feel it.

Emezi writes about the experience and feelings of being unsupported during some of the challenges they faced and about their determination not to compromise when it became clear the debut novel was going to sell.

There is much reflection on writing, the work, they are prolific, determined and have achieved success in a relatively short period of time, despite numerous challenges. They create and share a spell for storytellers, for those trying to create books. Clearly it worked!

With my spell, I drew a map of the future I wanted, then I took those defined lines and pulled them across time, dragging them into the present. Time bends very easily; you can fold it like this with little trouble.

Most of the letters are in appreciation and record events they do not wish to forget, that mark the rise.

Toni Morrison

One of the more memorable letters is to the late, great inspirational Toni Morrison. Emezi shares a quote, words she heard her speak in an interview after winning the Nobel Prize for literature. She remembers how Morrison’s work agitated many of the students, ‘because you wrote people who did horrific things, but you didn’t tell the reader how to feel about these people‘ and how delighted they were to discover you could ‘just show a terrible thing and let the showing be the strength of it’.

The words that changed everything for Emezi though were these:

“I stood at the border, stood at the edge, and claimed it as central, claimed it as central and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”

It is another of the spells they are using to become free.

Throughout the letters, there are references to ‘the magician’, at a certain point the reader asks who or what this presence is: a lover, a boyfriend and if one of those, is it going to endure for the duration of the book? It is a little mystery that eventually becomes a more direct subject of one or two of the letters, another record of events that transpire, of growth that occurs, of pain and hurt, of revenge even. Nothing is exempt in pursuit of the dream, to be the successful writer they desire.

A couple of the letters are to friends who are also human, non-humans, those in their life who totally get it without needing explanation, who accept their reality, with whom they can speak openly, fearlessly.

These humans are so loud in how they press down, in how they enforce their realities…It’s actually impressive, how someone can work so hard to crush a thing they can’t see.

Friendship provides a balm, and many of the letters, while they show the pain and suffering of someone growing into their adult self, lack the mature self-awareness that comes with age and wisdom. They demonstrate the importance of friendship and acceptance along the way.

In a letter To Kathleen on the subject of Worldbending they write:

The last time we texted, you wrote, I need you and our time this break. I know what you mean. The world can be a grit that sands away at us, and love can be a shelter from that…We are safer with each other. We see the world’s we’re trying to make, and we lend our power to each other’s spells.

Photo by Thgusstavo Santana on Pexels.com

After the publication of Freshwater, Emezi buys a house in New Orleans and names it Shiny. It is part of the plan, part of the future they are dreaming into being. Not everything in their lives is how they want it, but fortunately there is now a therapist in their lives, some of the reflections come from the raised consciousness of being in that process.

The house felt too big for me; it felt wrong, like I should have bought it years into my career, not thirteen months after my first book. For weeks, I didn’t sleep well there, worried that God would punish me for being so bold, for bending the world like this. It was Ann who talked me down, who told me that the house was oversized precisely so I could grow into it, so I could have the space to learn to unfurl. I needed that much room, as vast as it felt.

Writing To Jahra, another human/non-human entity, in Home, Emezi describes a return to her birth country, on a pilgrimage to a shrine of their deity, Ala. At the site, they feel seen, the entity nourished.

In a letter To Ann, called Anointing they write of the power of naming themselves, a form of disempowerment of those who want to label, categorise, bully by naming.

People want to be the ones drawing the lines, building the boxes, making the names. Maybe because stories live inside all those structures, and if you’re the one controlling the stories, then you’re the one in power. So they get really angry when you name yourself, especially if you’re the type of thing they were expecting to name. You know how it works: they form a circle around you, point, and call you a name you’re supposed to flinch from, a name you’re supposed to deny and be afraid of. That way, their naming becomes a weapon and what you are becomes a shame, a sentence, a tire around your neck rich with fire. Witch. Demon. Ogbanje. When you name yourself, however, you take the power from the wet, foaming flesh of their mouths and mold it in your hand as if it’s nothing, swallow waiting to slide down your throat, slickened with the soup of your self-knowing.
I thought about this a lot with Freshwater – what it meant, first of all, to publicly name myself ogbanje.

Emezi writes for people like them, for people who might think themselves in the margins, as an example of how to live when that perspective is shifted, when the centre is moved. There are costs when you choose or move a centre, costs they are willing to bear. They have been taught how aggressive they need to be with their wellness in order to survive.

Let the world move over, you said, and I obeyed.

It is an astonishing memoir, written from a frank perspective that doesn’t care whether the reader understands or not, it is for those who understand or are curious, the open-minded. And while it may appear self-indulgent, at times arrogant, narcissistic even, their work is making a splash.

I gave a talk at Yale recently, and at the reception afterward, a woman told me about a paper she wrote on Freshwater, how she was taking it to a medical conference to argue for recognising indigenous realities in treating people. It made me so happy, because it felt like a ripple, you know? You make one thing, and someone makes something else from that, and from there the world is changed, one fraction at a time.

The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

Described as a compelling novel about two women caught in a constricting web of tradition, class, gender, and motherhood and set in Nigeria, I requested this novel via NetGalley earlier this year immediately attracted by the premise and the setting.

Scotiabank Giller Prize 2021, Canada’s Literary Award

Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist Nigerian literary fiction Coincidentally, the day I started reading it, I became aware it was one of the five shortlisted novels for the Canadian literary award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize on the same day the winner was to be announced.

It didn’t win – that award went to journalist/novelist Omar El Akkad for What Strange Paradise, a novel that examines the current refugee crisis and the lengths to which people will go to find home, safety and belonging – however The Son of the House is already an award winning novel and one that addresses important contemporary issues and one I highly recommend reading.

Review

I really enjoyed The Son of the House right from the opening pages; the intrigue set up by the fact that two women have just been kidnapped from within their car on a residential street, we know nothing about who they are or why this has happened. However, it is not the drama that takes centre stage, it is the lives of the characters, who we will come to know.

These two do know this kind of thing can happen and the woman who drove castigates herself for having taken that particular road.

We did not entertain the idea that the police might save us, guns blazing, as happened in the movies. The police themselves, people said, would sometimes tell the family of kidnapped persons to go pay the ransom so that harm would not come to their loved one. They had neither the resources nor the serious desire to pursue kidnappers. There was even speculation that the police might be complicit in some kidnappings. So our only hope, like many kidnapping victims in this country, was that our people would come up with the money.

Since they are going to be spending time together, they decide to share their stories. And thus the reader must wait while getting to know these two women and the circumstances that lead to this intersection of their lives.

Their lives are very different, and both equally fascinating and riveting to read about.

Nwabulu, Orphan, Housemaid, Mother

gender women expectations motherhood The Son of the House

Photo by Breston Kenya on Pexels.com

Nwabulu, lost her mother when she was born and her father remarried soon after.

From that day, the peace and joy of our home moved somewhere else; peace and joy could not stay in the same room as Mama Nkemdilim’s jealousy.

Her stepmother resents her and at the first offer, sends her away to serve for a family. Innocent, yet she seems to go from one terrible situation to another, no adult looking out for her, she is vulnerable to the outside world, even within the supposed confines of an employer’s home.

I had been a housemaid for nearly half my life when I met Urenna. My first sojourn as a housemaid began when I was ten.

She finds a situation finally that suits her, only to be disgraced and sent back again to the village. The situation that occurs is the first instance we become aware of the presence and significance of ‘the son of the house’.

I was a housemaid. He was the son of the house. He would not really know what it was like to work in a place and live and sleep there but still know that it was not home. He would not know and I could not put it into words.

Back in the village, an older woman who has lost her son, appears to offer solace to Nwabulu, but her life too revolves around this traditional symbol, and the lengths to which she will go to fulfill it are devastating.

Although this is a story of women, it is also about the intersection of women and the importance, presence and success of this symbol, ‘the son of the house’ to their society and how it impacts their lives as girls, sisters, young women, and as mothers.

Julie, Sister, Unmarried daughter, Second wife

parental authority expectations gender The Son of the House

Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com

The second woman Julie is single and contentedly having an affair with a married man. She has one brother and he is supposed to be the example and support of his family, according to how their father has raised them.

“By joining the church and getting an education,” he continued, “I brought light to my family. It is the duty of each new person in the line to bring something good to the family, to keep the family going.”

However, due to her brother’s problems, her father makes this her responsibility, on his death bed, that she will work to ensure the success of her brother in meeting his familial duties – here again we realise that these stories, these women’s lives revolve in some way around maintaining the tradition, the status of the patriarchy, in the elevation of and presence of ‘the son of the house’.

I would make a better son of the house, I sometimes thought. But what fell to me was not carrying on the family name but ensuring that the one who was to do so succeeded.

Unexpected Friendships, Synchronicity’s

Cheluchi OnyeMelukwe Onubia Europa Editions UK As their stories unfold, we also discover the importance of these women’s friendships, both of them have been helped by their best female friend at a turning point in their lives and the mystery gradually unfolds as to what has brought these unexpected allies together.

It’s a riveting read and an insight into Nigerian culture and classism, into how two very different women navigate a traditional patriarchal society and not only survive, but the lengths to which they will go to both meet those cultural/societal expectations, to develop resilience, how they find ways to rise beyond it.

I loved the book and thought the characters were realistic and intriguing and the sense of place evocative.

Here’s the fabulous UK cover version, it was published in the UK by my favourite publisher, Europa Editions in May 2021. Highly Recommended.

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, Author

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia is a Nigerian-Canadian lawyer, academic and writer.

She holds a doctorate in law from Dalhousie University and works in the areas of health, gender, and violence against women and children.

Cheluchi divides her time between Lagos and Halifax.

The Son of the House was shortlisted for Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize 2021, winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2021, and winner of the Best International Fiction Book Award, Sharjah International Book Fair 2019.

September 26, 2021 by Claire 'Word by Word'

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

This was a brilliant read and the kind of cross cultural, reading journey I love.

Imbolo Mbue takes you back to the fictional African village, Kosawa in the 1980’s. It could be in any number of countries, a fact acknowledged by naming her characters after real towns and cities.

She tells what should be a simple story, about how the village has been affected by the interventions of outsiders and those placed in power within their own country and the people’s attempt to seek and find justice.

Mostly the story is narrated through the multi-generational members of one family, of Thula and her brother Juba, their mother Saleh, grandmother Yaya, uncle Bongo and then the third person plural (we) of The Children, Thula’s age mates. It reaches back to the 1970’s and travels through to the current day.

Seeking Justice, Inviting Retribution

The issue the village initially attempts to address is the polluting of the river and air, resulting in the poisoning of the land, the destruction of their farming way of life and the deaths of too many of their children, since this latest American corporation Pexton, arrived and began drilling for oil.

Though the villages allowed the corporation to drill for oil, based on assurances that all would be more than well for them, they suspect their problems are due to contamination created by the activities of Pexton. The corporation deny all and their paid village representative tries to downplay the gravity of their losses. Continue reading →

September 3, 2021 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Zambia)

I read this over a period of four weeks in a group read along in July.

wp-1629985501548..jpg It is a vast tome, that traverses generations and continents, though the thing that connects them all is the country Zambia.

The novel is book-ended by brief chapters entitled The Falls and The Dam. It begins near the infamous Victoria Falls in an area five miles above the Falls on the banks of the Zambezi River, where it’s deepest and narrowest and easiest for ‘drifting’ a body across the other side.

Here there was an old colonial settlement that came to be known as The Old Drift and an old drifter caught up in an event that sets off the intertwined narrative.

“This is the story of a nation — not a kingdom or people — so it begins, of course, with a white man.”

Split into three sections, within which there are three characters in each, from three parts of a family tree. The Grandmothers, The Mothers, The Children.

It is a sprawling saga by nature of crossing that many generations, though the stories narrow and overlap by the time it comes to the children, the differences between them nothing like the generations before them.

Drifting Across Genre

Zambezi River at the junction of Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana

Its a novel that also crosses genre beginning in a colonial era with European settlers, and the women they brought with them, the secrets they kept, the way they live, what is expected of them.

I enjoyed reading the first part of Sibilla and Agnes and I liked that the chapters were structured that way, that we were reading of the three grandmothers, that we knew this ahead of time.

It felt comforting to be reading inside this known framework, (for such a vast book), so while there were many characters, these women orient the reader.

While reading a section I could hold on to who the characters were however as the sections changed it was often necessary to refer back to the family tree. I enjoyed the first two sections and though I was forewarned that the ending was going to cross genre, it felt somewhat disconnected to the earlier sections and I found myself reluctant to pick it up at times.

In an interview the author when asked about this genre crossing responded that “these collisions are at the heart of the creative process.”

Photo Jonny Lew on Pexels.com

I wondered if it was because I read it over the course of a month, but reading weekly commentary in the ReadAlong group discussing the book, it seems many had a similar issue with the change of pace and narrative direction of the latter part of the novel. Like the river itself, the narrative drifts and wanders, swirls and eddies, then changes pace as it moves towards that vast precipice, converging for the final spill.

“with a sprawling cast that springs from Zambia, England and Italy. Over the course of three generations, Serpell follows historical figures and fictional characters as they converge on Lusaka, drawing them closer into each others’ orbit through independence in 1964, the HIV/Aids epidemic and on into a near future filled with mosquito drones and revolution” – extract from an interview with Richard Lea, Guardian

Forced to Grow by Sindiwe Magona (1992)

A Second Autobiography, From Disempowered to Empowered

After reading the first volume of her autobiography To My Children’s Children, this second volume covers South African writer, teacher and facilitator Sindiwe Magona’s life, from the age of 23 to 40, from the lowest point in her life, to one of the highest. The last chapter of the first volume Forced to Grow, becomes the title of this wonderful book.

Sindiwe Magona Finding herself unemployed and pregnant with her third child after being pushed out of a teaching job – her husband’s parting shot as he abandons his young family, to inform her employer of his disapproval (a husband’s approval was required for a married (black) woman to be eligible to work) – she reinvents herself, creating her own work (selling sheep heads (cooked) she’d bought on credit) initially to survive, determined to reinstate herself back into the teaching profession, to extend and elevate her education and move beyond surviving to thriving.

From poverty and struggle to a job offer with the UN in New York, this second volume of autobiography was hard to put down.

Overcoming Fear Through Perseverance and Self-Belief

Though she had a legal certificate to teach, she would spend four years working as a domestic servant in white women’s homes, because she was not a “breadwinner”, she had a husband. Unmarried, childless women enjoyed preferential hiring, as long as they retained that status. Ironically, she would find a way back into teaching when two unmarried teachers were forced to resign their posts, due to being “in the family way”.

I have this fear that if I ever believe that others wield power over my destiny, that I am so vulnerable, I might as well abdicate control of my life. For if I accept that, what is to stop me attributing to others all the setbacks I encounter? And once that happens, why would I do anything to get back on my own two feet? I would be virtually saying that it was beyond me to reclaim myself. I would be accepting absolute lack of control. And the Good Lord knows, I had very little control over my life as it was.

This fear, this need to go on believing I am in the driver’s seat, may be the one ingredient in my make-up I will not find easy to relinquish.

Therefore, with everything I cherished taken, broken or out of reach, I resolved I would become self-sufficient. I would work hard. I would study. I would pull myself up by my bootstraps. Yes, even though I had still to acquire the boots.

wp-1621263406986..jpg Pursuing a higher level of education to offset so much else that set her back, fed into Magona’s ambition; as she achieved, her self belief grew and she pushed herself further, while assuming the role of both parents.

Moving from teaching into administration she witnessed how the country’s racist policies affect families, joining SACHED (South African committee for Higher Education) widened her circle of contact, connection, perspective & confidence.

What an inspiration Sindiwe is and what a gift to have witnessed her journey through reading; her perseverance and determination to make something more of herself, while trying to raise her children in a way to overcome the societally perceived disadvantage of being without the support or presence of the children’s father.

She sees the gift inherent in his abandonment, which is an example of how strong her mind is, she rewrites the narrative of her own life and how it will be. An errant husband is one thing, trying to create a career and attain a higher education while living within a system of apartheid and not being recognised as a citizen of your own country is impossible to imagine.

We are all the more fortunate to have been given such an insight into this personal and collective struggle and one courageous woman’s ability to work through and overcome it, in defiance of what the govt of the time wanted for the local African population.

Women Cooperating in Partnership

This volume too is an affirmation of the power and support made possible when women work in partnership, in collaboration, in community for a higher good.

The various groups she becomes part of that bring women together from different races, social classes and backgrounds and the facilitated discussions they have, both bring out her natural ability as a facilitator and leader and create a safe place for all them to develop empathy, to know each other, hear differing perspectives, challenge them, look for ways to resolve problems and how to put pressure where things need to change.

Invited to attend a meeting of a group of women who wanted change, it would create a pivotal turning point in her career.

As might be surmised, CWC (Church Women Concerned) was multi-racial, multi-denominational, inclusive of all faiths. It had members from the Christian faith, the Islamic faith and the Jewish faith. The primary objective was to build bridges, to effect reconciliation, to attempt to live lives that projected well into the future, to a time when the laws that separated us according to skin colour would be no more.

It was a fond dream put forward as a testimony of faith. We truly believed the possibility existed for apartheid to be dismantled. Therefore, it behoved us to hasten the process by living the future now.

I was reminded of my recent read of Riane Eisler and Douglas Fry’s Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, and the pockets of a Partnership System approach to living and being they promote and suggest already exist; something women are naturally capable of creating if given a chance, or are bold enough to go ahead and create these circles of connection and support anyway, as Sindiwe Magona and others did, despite the risks.

“Humans are capable of living in egalitarian social systems where neither dominates the other, where violence is minimized, and where prosocial cooperation and caring typify social life. This image is not a utopian fantasy but rather a set of potentials, if not inclinations, stemming from our evolutionary heritage.” Riane Eisler

A Third Volume of Autobiography Please

Oh I wish there was a third volume, I do hope she might be writing one, covering the last 30 years. However I also understand why since her retirement she has been writing children’s books, creating a necessary resource for children in her country and around the world, to learn, be entertained and create understanding, hope and belief in the ability for situations to change.

Highly Recommended.

May 17, 2021 by Claire 'Word by Word'

To My Children’s Children by Sindiwe Magona (1990)

“Until the lioness can tell its own story the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” African Proverb

This first of two autobiographies by South African author Sindiwe Magona was initially published in 1990, and the second volume in 1997.

A Lioness Shares Her Story

Frustrated like many, at seeing her country and people portrayed as backward and uncivilised by colonisers, she decided to rectify the balance, a literary scholar, sharing her life and experience first hand, an important and insightful narrative for a wider audience, dedicated to her own children and grandchildren, and perhaps especially for girls, on their path to womanhood.

In a conversation with anthropologist and activist Elaine Salo, Magona said:

I experienced incredible anger about others writing about us, I asked myself, ‘How dare they write about you?’ I told myself that shouldn’t stop me from writing about myself … There is value in those like me writing about our experiences, who did not study apartheid but lived it.

It is authentic experiences like this, that offer a richness in understanding other cultures from the inside, reading the personal experience of one women in her struggle to raise and support her children, understanding how her childhood and upbringing shaped and supported her, enabling her to cope when other societal support structures let her down.

Review

Autobiography South Africa Women The slim autobiography shares stories from her childhood up to the age of 23, all of it taking place in South Africa. In her early years, as was customary among amaXhosa people, she lived with her grandparents. It was often the case while parents were trying to earn a living in starting a new life, that the extended family and home community was the safest, most caring environment for young children to be. There was always someone to look after children, they had food, shelter, company and they thrived.

As she explains, looking back it may have been poverty, but that wasn’t something they were aware of; they belonged, were loved and felt secure. There was no awareness of the link between the colour of one’s skin and a difference in lifestyle, until much later, their paths never crossed, outsiders had no impact on their very young lives.

In such a people-world, filled with a real, immediate, and tangible sense of belongingness, did I spend the earliest years of my life. I was not only wanted, I was loved. I was cherished.
The adults in my world, no doubt, had their cares and their sorrows. But childhood, by its very nature, is a magic-filled world, egocentric, wonderfully carefree, and innocent. Mine was all these things and more.

Generations of Storytellers

Not only did they learn and grow from being socialised in these large families, they listened to stories, passed down the generations. There was always one or two in the family, renowned for their storytelling ability, masters in this art and the children revelled in those evenings when they became the audience to them.

Central to the stories in which people featured, was the bond of love with the concomitants: duty, obedience, responsibility, honour, and orderliness; always orderliness. Like the seasons of the year, life was depicted full of cause and effect, predictability and order; connectedness and oneness.

Photo TUBARONES on Pexels.com

In this warm, human environment she spent her first five years, immersed in a group where her place was defined, accepted, giving her all she required and more.

Far from the distant world where white people lived and ruled, busy formulating policies that would soon impact them all, policies that invited in certain immigrants, offering them privileged rights, while denying them of the local black population, restricting their ability to move from one area to another, fracturing families, keeping them in poverty.

Everything changed when her mother left to join her father due to illness, to be near medical support and soon after, her grandmother died, requiring them all to leave and join their parents.

A New Era, Fractured Families and Apartheid

It would be fortuitous timing as a year later, in 1948, the Boers came into power and laws were formulated restricting the movement of Africans. Had her grandmother died later, they may not have legally been able to rejoin them.

The move to live with their parents introduced them to a less harmonious world, one where police raids occurred and crime existed. Within the law or outside the law, there was reason to be more careful and fearful. The importance of attaining an education was the focus, to rise above.

The year I left primary school was the year that education became racially segregated. Hitherto, white pupils, African pupils coloured pupils, and Indian pupils could, theoretically, attend the same school. After 1955, the law forbade that practice. There would be different Departments of Education for the different race groups.

Her years of education were dependent on her attitude, some years she did well, others she lapsed, eventually her focus concentrated on becoming a teacher, though in her initial attempts to secure a position, she would initially be thwarted. Her real life lessons were only just beginning.

Lessons from the Real World

Father began hinting at what might at the root of my problem: I had omitted to offer the Secretary of the School Board “something” and people were telling him it would be donkey’s years before I would get a post if we did not oil this gentleman’s palm.

Though she had done well in her classes, they were inadequate and wholly misleading as to how to prepare to teach children from poor homes, without textbooks, without exercise books, without materials. Trained to teach children from homes where there was a father and a mother, most of her pupils came from women-headed homes. And those women stayed in at their places of employment: busy being smiling servants minding white babies.

Not having books is one of the misdemeanors punishable by corporal punishment. The beatings and probably the sheer embarrassment that must surely accompany the daily proclamation of one’s poverty, prompted a lot of the pupils to pilfer. The very young do not always understand that poverty is supposed to ennobling…

The first class she would teach would have 72 pupils and had all been well, they should have been aged 11 or 12. All was not well however, the children ranged in age from 9 to 19 and the variation in skills just as wide.

Due to her principled stance, that first job would take a while in coming. Unemployed, but desperate to work, she accepted a job at the local fisheries.

Eventually she is offered a teaching job, experiencing the few joys and many disappointments inherent in an unfair, overstretched, oppressive system.

All along, I had known the agony for which some were destined. Such is the design of the government. And such is the abetting by even those of us who regard ourselves as oppressed. Which we are. But we are also called upon to help in that oppression and unwittingly become instruments of it.

A Woman’s Lot

And then comes the intersection of youth with a newly developing career and as a woman, the added risk of pregnancy. Magona’s challenges are only just beginning and her teaching jobs will become continuously thwarted by how society expects women to behave. The arrival of her own children will force her from her role and into domestic service herself, and really open her eyes to how the other live.

What I had not known was that their perception of people like us did not quite coincide with our perception of who we were and what we were about.

More than anything, however, being a domestic servant did more to me than it did for me. It introduced me to the fundamentals of racism.

The different families she would work for, each provide key insights that broaden her understanding and perception of the other groups living within the country and how the system aimed to maintain and strengthen the situation in favour of white people.

As this volume comes to an end, Sindiwe’s situation seems dire, however, she delivers some of the most inspiring passages of the book, in the low place she has arrived at, she suddenly sees all that she is grateful for, all that she has, even the abandonment of a husband who had never supported them, she recognises as a freedom and a significant contribution to her own growth.

It is a wonderful and frank autobiography and introduction to an inspiring woman. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Forced to Grow, the same title as the last chapter in this volume, in which she shares how determination and resourcefulness lead her through and out of those challenges we end with here.

Sindiwe Magona

My Childrens Children Memoir Autobiography South Africa Magona was born in 1943 in the small town of Gungululu near Mthatha, in what was then known as the homeland of Transkei, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

She was born five years before colonial Britain handed over power to the Afrikaners. Apartheid was officially introduced in 1948 and with it a series of oppressive and racist laws such as separate living areas and the Bantu education system. It was within this context that Magona grew up.

She is an accomplished poet, dramatist, storyteller, actress and motivational speaker. She spent two decades working for the UN in New York retiring in 2003. Her previously published works include thirty children’s books (in all eleven South African languages), two autobiographies, short story collections and novels.

My writing, on the whole, is my response to current social ills, injustice, misrepresentation, deception – the whole catastrophe that is the human existence. Sindiwe Magona

The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Brilliant. I absolutely loved this novel and it will definitely feature in my Best Reads of 2021.

The First Woman might even have surpassed her debut novel Kintu which was fabulous and my outstanding read of 2018.

Firstly I am a huge fan of literature that takes us elsewhere, into the storytelling traditions of other cultures, seen from the inside, told in a way that doesn’t alienate a reader from outside that culture, but has both a particular and universal message. And secondly, when a novel has all the essential storytelling elements.

Jennifer Makumbi’s storytelling has all the elements – great, unforgettable characters, a ‘moving at pace’ plot, a little bit of mystery, a whole lot of feminism plus controversy, multiple perspectives, mini dramas and the wise counsel of women who’ve had enough of past injustices.

Rural, Urban – Past, Present

Then there is the contrast of the rural life and upbringing versus an urban existence, the striving for and effect of education on girls and the natural way that local Ugandan folklore and ancestral stories are interwoven throughout their way of living, learning and coming of age. They create a sense of belonging and help young people navigate their concerns, sorrows, strange feelings and unanswered questions in a thought provoking and entertaining way

In Kintu, Makumbi set part of her story in the pre-colonial 1700’s and other parts in modern times; colonial interlopers had left their imprint, but it was not their story nor a story of their influence and so too The First Woman belongs to and is born of its people, whose existence grows and evolves from their unique origins, belief systems and traditions. Their challenges come from within their culture and again Makumbi focuses on what is uniquely Ugandan.

Family Secrets and Lies

The narrative begins when Kirabo is a teenage living with her grandmother, she develops a curiosity to know who her mother is, she is awakening to a perceived deficit in her life and notices that those closest to her are unwilling to talk about it. So she seeks out Nsuutu, who some refer to as the witch, intuitively knowing she may have knowledge, visiting her in secret.

Though Nsuutu was practically blind, behind her blindness she could see. But Nsuutu was not just a witch – she was Grandmother’s foe. Their feud was Mount Kilimanjaro. Apparently, Nsuutu had stolen love from the family.

The First Woman, the Original State

Nsuutu tells Kirabo that she has “the original state” of the first woman inside her. This explanation and story is shared over various visits and sets up an extremely compelling narrative, as Kirabo learns from this wonderful, empowered but ageing feminist. However, she is warned her not to go looking for her mother, an instruction that feeds her obsession, making it all-consuming.

‘We changed when the original state was bred out of us.’ Kirabo looked at her hands as if to see the change. ‘Was it bad what we were? Is it what makes me do bad things?

‘No, it was not bad at all. In fact, it was wonderful for us. We were not squeezed inside, we were huge, strong, bold, loud, proud, brave, independent. But it was too much for the world and they got rid of it. However, occasionally that state is reborn in a girl like you. But in all cases it is suppressed. In your case the first woman flies out of your body because it does not relate to the way this society is.’

Narrative Structure

The First Woman Ugandan Literature The story is divided into five sections; The Witch (Nattetta, Bugerere, Uganda 1975), The Bitch (Kampala 1977), Utopia, When The Villages Were Young (Nattetta 1934) and Why Penned Hens Peck Each Other (1983).

After Nsuutu’s wise counsel, Kirabo’s life is upended when it is announced she will go to Kampala to live with her father Tom, about whom she has never been curious. She has seen him on and off over the years as he visited the clan in the village where she lives, but now she will go and live with him in the city, where it becomes clear that much more had been hidden from her.

Nsuutu held both her hands. ‘Don’t judge the women you met too harshly.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Often, what women do is a reaction. We react like powerless people. Remember kweluma?’

‘When women bite themselves because they are powerless.’

‘Tell me that whatever happens, you will not make another woman’s life worse.’

‘I won’t, Nsuuta!’ Kirabo was miffed that Nsuutu would ask.

‘Remember, be a good person, not a good girl. Good girls suffer a lot in this life.’

‘Utopia‘ is when she is sent to St Theresa’s, a girl’s boarding school. An education, a world without men, though interrupted by war and expulsions that occur elsewhere, having the effect of changing the balance of power and perception among the girls as well, many will leave and a new influx will arrive. It is also the period where her friendship with Sio develops.

St Theresa’s was a safe space for them to develop their talents without intimidation, interference or interruption. They owed it to themselves, and to all other girls who did not have their privilege, to excel and to change the world. ‘Our job is to arm the girl child with with tools so she can live a meaningful life, for herself and for the nation.’

Historical Influence

The narrative then returns to the past, to 1934 when her grandmother Alikisa and Nsuutu were children and fills in the backstory to their friendship, a pact, their very different aspirations and the effect of the community on how their lives play out. Much of this section is told through letters they write to each other while Nsuutu is at nursing school and Alikisa is at home, having abandoned her plans to become a midwife, encouraged by her father towards teaching.

Finally, a family tragedy brings the entire clan together, and opinions are aired, grievances followed through, threads come together, some rifts are healed, others not, but there is the opportunity to break new ground, and move on from the past, without significant loss.

The First Woman is bold, empowered, authentic storytelling of the highest order, that embraces its cultural origins and exposes the reader to universal emotions, questions, conflicts, shame, friendships, love and humanity it shares.

It is both a story and an act of courage that provokes men and women to consider their roles and the effect their decisions have on others, to consider alternatives, seeking a kinder, more just way of being, rather than repeating the same patters that have existed.

Highly Recommended.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author

The First Woman Kintu A Ugandan fiction writer, her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. Her second book is a collection of short stories, titled Manchester Happened (2019) for the UK/Commonwealth publication and Let’s Tell This Story Properly (US/Canada). It was shortlisted for The Big Book prize: Harper’s Bazaar.

Her third book, titled The First Woman (2020) UK/Commonwealth and A Girl is a Body of Water (US/Canada) was the Winner of the Jhalak Prize – Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour (2021), shortlisted for The Diverse Book Awards 2021, for the Encore Prize 2021, and the James Tait Black Prize 2021 and longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize 2021.

Makumbi was a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize 2018. She won the Global Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 for her short story, Let’s Tell This Story Properly. She is a Cheuse International Writing Fellow (2019) and KNAW-NAIS residency (2021). She has a PhD from Lancaster University and has been a senior lecturer at several universities in Britain.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

Emezi’s Freshwater was an incredible read and a real insight into a cultural perspective, taking you inside it and experiencing it, so I was very much looking forward to this next work.

Akwaeke Emezi trans literature Though we learn that Vivek is dead from the cover and in the opening pages, the novel is in a sense a mystery as the details around the death are not revealed until the end. The novel is set in Nigeria, in a community of mostly mixed race families.

The narrative is multi perspective, told through the voice of Vivek, his cousin and close friend Osita and a third-person omniscient narrator. The first chapter is one sentence:

They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.

The market burning down provides a beginning, a middle and an ending, it features in exactly those places, here as a marker or a clue, in the middle as an observation by a previously unknown character whose wife runs a stall in the middle of the market and at the end, when Vivek’s final day is shared.

The first half of the book we get to know the families, Chika, his brother Ekene, married to Mary, then later Chika’s Indian wife Kavita, mother to Vivek. The narrative tells the story of their marriage, of how they try to raise their only child. Kavita is part of a group of women referred to as the Nigerwives.

She had learned to cook Nigerian food from her friends – a group of women, foreign like her, who were married to Nigerian men and were aunties to each other’s children. They belonged to an organisation called Nigerwives, which helped them assimilate into these new lives so far away from the countries they’d come from. They weren’t wealthy expats, at least not the ones we knew. They didn’t come to work for oil companies; they simply came for their husbands, for their families.

Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

Through the friendships of the mothers, Osita and Vivek become friends with JuJu and Elisabeth. Among themselves, away from school or family and outside of society, they are already a group who is different, and with each other, they are accepting, able to express themselves, though they have each inherited varying degrees of conditioning from their mixed parentage.

Vivek is sent away to school, about which we learn very little, we know he is unhappy and bears scars.

The narrative explores the development of their friendships and sexuality, interspersed with the present day obsession of Kavita, determined to find out how her son’s body mysteriously turned up on their front veranda wrapped in a fabric.

Chika didn’t want to ask any question. Kavita, though, was made of nothing but questions, hungry questions bending her into a shape that was starving for answers.

Maybe it was intentional, but in creating the element of mystery, much about the character of Vivek is held back, perhaps to recreate the effect of what the parent might have experienced, but for me personally, I found it disappointing that the character of Vivek was compromised and an opportunity missed to inhabit that character more.

The deliberate obscuring heightens the effect of the reveal, but sacrifices the opportunity to share something more profound with readers. It’s difficult to develop empathy for a character, when so much is held back and when the potential is clearly there.

That was why they’d kept it from their parents, to protect Vivek from those who didn’t understand him. They barely understood him themselves, but they loved him, and that had been enough.

It’s a novel of secrets and lies and the debate of truth versus respect, in that belief that the two can’t coexist. And the safety inherent within a fear of judgement by some, versus the danger of a lack of fear in others. A theme that is likely to continue to be explored by Emezi.

“Look,” she said, “eventually all secrets come out. It’s just a matter of time. And the longer it takes, the worse it is in the end.”

As I read, I can feel what I am bringing to the narrative, where I want the author to go and by the end they do go some of the way, but not all. And that is on me, it is asking an already courageous writer to go further, to places that us readers, like sports fans, might never go ourselves, but from the benches we shout in encouragement. So I leave the last words to the author, as a reminder to us all of what this is.

I had to remember why I was making this work. I wasn’t making it for institutional validation. I was making this work for specific people — all the people living in these realities feeling lonely and wanting to die because they’re like, this world thinks I’m crazy and I don’t belong here. All the little trans babies who are just like, there is no world in which my parents will love me and accept me. There’s a mission to all of this. Akwaeke Emezi

A Focus on World Literature

Otherworldly Surrealism that Feels Real

Poetry, Death News, Snatchers

Jolly anna ha-ha-ha

There but Not There, A Peculiar Absence

Friendship and Sisterhood

Okwiri Oduor, Author

Further Reading

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Author

Further Reading

Further Reading

Scotiabank Giller Prize 2021, Canada’s Literary Award

Review

Nwabulu, Orphan, Housemaid, Mother

Julie, Sister, Unmarried daughter, Second wife

Unexpected Friendships, Synchronicity’s

Further Reading

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, Author

Seeking Justice, Inviting Retribution

Drifting Across Genre

Further Reading

A Second Autobiography, From Disempowered to Empowered

Overcoming Fear Through Perseverance and Self-Belief

Women Cooperating in Partnership

A Third Volume of Autobiography Please

A Lioness Shares Her Story

Review

Generations of Storytellers

A New Era, Fractured Families and Apartheid

Lessons from the Real World

A Woman’s Lot

Sindiwe Magona

Further Reading

Rural, Urban – Past, Present

Family Secrets and Lies

The First Woman, the Original State

Narrative Structure

Historical Influence

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author

Further Reading

Further Reading