My father is a polygamist and every time it becomes necessary to reveal that fact to other people, I tense up and will always accompany it with “…but my mothers love each other and we children are so close,sometimes we cannot tell the difference.” This book was so brazen that I did not feel the need to defend a thing. This story was so original and personal that I did not feel the need to be defensive.
This here was the story of a good man who’s ego pushed him to get more wives in order to get more children and landed on a jackpot when one of them happened to be a graduate!
I enjoyed the way the story was told from many perspectives. A true treat. Mu favourite had to be the second wife(so typical of a greedy reader to forget the name).
You greedy girl! Anyhow I have also just commenced reading the book and I can hardly put it down. Lola is simply bold and I feel that there is not enough written about the sex lives of African women, they are just these burdened creatures who do not live to enjoy being loved, they simply just bear every single painful blow life deals them. Lola is bold in that she gets pursues the whole issue which is very much present but no one never really speaks about it. Sure many mothers are now all about warning their daughters against abstinence but no one is telling African girls what sex really is like and has been all these years in the African context. We are then left to look up to the West and read those perfect romance novels and apart from these books being misleading, they are far away from what African men really are. This book has taught me so much. i think I have learnt more of what a polygamous marriage really is like from this book than from my home which is polygamous. This book is simply amazing. I also love Iya Tope(Wife no.2) and of course Bolanle. I now see that African women also have desires that need quenching and are’t just numb beings that go about life like zombies.
Aaah mean! Thank you so much for this comment, i think you have just made for half of my review 🙂
I totally agree with you 100% Lola is indeed courageous and she continues to set precedence for all of us women who are afraid to break the mould or shake the status quo.
What I love most about the book is that for me it has explored the issue of choice, something that I have been thinking a lot lately. Many women will prefer polygamy over spinsterhood any time, why is this the case? I think if spinsterhood status had less damaging effects,such as less shame or less alienation or loss of respect many more women would choose it, like Iya Segi.
I was snapping to heaven and back about your comment on sexuality! mmh! mmh! Girl you are on fayaaaaa! The very interesting thing I observed from all these wives being forced or choosing extra-marital affairs is that this was a statement, a statement that is very crucial especially in the context of polygamy where only the man gets maximum sexual satisfaction, this statement is: Hey! Women have libidos! We desire! we too deserve to be sexually satisfied! We too are attracted to the sexual and physical just as much as we are to the emotional and intellectual.We too are visual! This was all really liberating mehn!
Iya Tope is my favourite as well! There is something about her. Her sexuality, her desire for education and even her wisdom. I also found the one who bleaches herself, greedy me already forgot her name,oh yes! Iya Femi to be very interesting. I think she told it as it is. Her, she was going to hustle it out and even meet all your patriarchal demands while at it. She was a very twisted image of empowerment even within the white supremacist patriarchy. Of course Bolanle is the love of my life, I think she embodies so much of me and my generations’ experiences. From her complex relationship with her mother to “always being the good girl until until” ,to realisations that the like of your life across the street is just playing games to experiencing rape and having to deal with it for so long to “going back to her roots” ah mehn! She is so much!
oops, I don’t want to spoil it for you but I think you have also enabled me to lengthen the review. I want to reread it just to take it all in again! God bless you, Lola!
ooh ooh, one last thing. you know how many people make it a point to bash women with that “you women are your own worst enemies?” I think this story gives a more complex explanation for this, sometimes it just boils down to the law of the jungle, “survival for the fittest.” Maybe we should know better but really, my children still need to eat and get pomade for their hair so if you are the provider and have made the resources scarce because of your greed and because of your power to feed me I cannot fight you, si I will fight the ones you have made me believe are my competitors, ahn ahn!