The Bride Price

The story is a revelation of Igbo cultural practices in the 1950s and ’60s as it affects women and children. It starts with an Igbo family in Lagos (a father with a leg injury sustained from World War II, a mother gone back to the village to visit the fertility goddess, an older girl and a younger boy both in primary school) then traces the plight of the family when the father suddenly dies in hospital: The burial ceremonies, how the death was kept from the wife, how the family had to relocate to the village, the mourning practices the woman had to go through in the village/town of Ibuza in the then Midwest State.

From then on the story concentrates on how the woman (Ma Blackie) was inherited by the brother-in-law (Okonkwo) and how this man planned to use the bride price for his daughters for political advancement, to become an Eze. Then there is the issue of slavery and how descendants of slaves were discriminated against across Igboland, and the irony of their becoming the first to be educated and advance in the new European system taking root. The educated daughter (Aku-nna) falls in love with her school teacher in the village (Chike) but because the school teacher’s ancestor was a slave Aku-nna’s step-father and in fact the whole village forbid her to marry into their family, their wealth notwithstanding. Instead of this, a “free” family abducts her into a forced marriage, not because their son loves the girl, but just to teach the so-called slave family (Ofulue) a lesson. Hating the situation, Aku-nna is able to delay forced consummation of the marriage. She is able to escape the village with Chike and they are happily settled in Ughelli.

But then the marriage to Chike had upturned the customs of the village, with the attendant consequences both real and imagined. Okonkwo refused to accept bride price from Ofulue for Aku-nna, and unable to achieve his political ambition, went out to kill the girl via ritualistic means, through the system of a bewitching doll. The girl herself knew the cultural belief of the people regarding nonpayment of bride price: The woman is supposed to die at childbirth. And for one reason or the other, this tragic end closed the story, after her child was born by Caesarean operation.

April 20, 2015. Review initially written in 2004. Novel first published in 1976. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).

Second-Class Citizen

This is the story of an ambitious Nigerian Igbo girl in the fifties and sixties who had an early dream of going to England. She had to fight to be allowed to attend primary school, being a girl, and when her father died she had to work as a servant for an uncle. She fought her way to secondary school through a scholarship, but after that she realized she had to get married just to have a home. She chose an over-indulged young man to marry and that was the greatest mistake she made. The man was lazy, had a low opinion of women, and expected her to work while he studied and watched TV. Her dream of going to the UK was realized, but their marriage fell to pieces.

The title is a reference to the way black people were discriminated at in England at that time. Ada was surprised by it all and learned very quickly that white people were not all the saints they’d appeared to be as missionaries in Nigeria, that there were good and bad white people just as there were good and bad black people.

I had the impression that the heroine was too young for the sort of roles and responsibilities she got in the story after arrival in England. The author’s sense of humor shows clearly in the story and personally a lot of the situations reminded me of personal experiences, like Ada’s having to work as a servant when her father died, and Francis’ ordering his children to speak only English.

February 24, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1974. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).