In Rural Nigeria, a Heroine Who Wants to Be Defined by More Than Marriage

Fiction When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICEBy Abi Daré Abi Daré’s debut novel, “The Girl With the Louding Voice,” is told in a prose style that will sound unfamiliar to many readers, particularly Western ones. But the effect is as vivid as the sassy, strong-willed narrator’s pidgin. Though occasionally challenging, Adunni’s brave, fresh voice powerfully articulates a resounding anger toward Africa’s toxic patriarchy.

Fourteen-year-old Adunni lives in a Nigerian village with her layabout, alcoholic father and two brothers. The novel opens on the morning her father informs her she is to become the local taxi driver’s third wife in order to support the family. Adunni’s is a poverty-stricken world where girls kneel to their fathers and address them as “Sah” without looking them in the eye, where a paternal summons portends nothing but heartache. That night Adunni “didn’t able to sleep all night with all the sorrowing and memorying” about her mother, Idowu, who “was paying for school fees and rent moneys and feeding money and everything money before she was dead.

” Idowu was also the one who instructed Adunni to pursue an education at all costs: “Your schooling is your voice, child. It will be speaking for you even if you didn’t open your mouth to talk. ” The feisty, smart-talking Adunni’s resulting determination to stay in school and become a teacher sets her on a collision course with the rest of her village, where girls’ lives are defined by marriage. The subjugation and sexual objectification of girls and women are recurrent, ably handled themes throughout the novel.

Adunni is warned against becoming like Tola, an educated, self-supporting banker who the villagers assume can’t find a husband “maybe because she is looking like a agama lizard with long hair or maybe because she is having money like a man. ” As her best friend excitedly does Adunni’s makeup for the wedding, Adunni can’t even see the mirror through her tears. Though even her beloved little brother thinks Adunni may be better off married than staying at home, she is anything but welcome in her new family, her elder co-wife declaring her a “husband snatcher. ” In the second ominous call from a man to change Adunni’s life forever, her new husband, Morufu, summons her to his room — which appears to her “like a burial coffin” — to sleep with him.