Days after I’ve read this amazing work – I’m still thinking of it.
I went on a journey with Yejide and Akin, their journey of struggling to have children, the struggles and frustrations that they go through during the process.
Yejide and Akin stay on my mind, simply because Ayobami makes one really feel what they’re going through as they struggle with having a baby. The pressures from society and family came as no surprise to me as it’s also our own people who put pressure on us, young married couples to “make lots of babies” – not considering the health issues, finances, circumstances, couple’s choice not to have any children or not etc.
Parts of this book made me sad, I could feel for Yejide as she tried to do everything including going to a traditional healer/religious man on top of mountain just to be told she’s going to have a child. And having to accept Akin’s family choosing a wife for him to have children with. All of this just to please her moomi – and to be seen as a woman who will give her grandkids. It is apparent that this rule runs deep in the African continent – the notion that you’re not a woman until you have given birth.
There were parts where I didn’t enjoy the war/coup historical part of the book but I eventually accepted that since it was part of Yejide and Akin’s lives from when they met – it made sense to include it.
In the end I wished there could have been more on the time Yejide spent alone as she thought she wasn’t a mother anymore.
A well written African story.
