In this week’s #AkumbuReviews, a translated work is the focus, in an effort to understand what the author set out to achieve.
By Akumbu Uche
In her 2011 short story, ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’, Taiye Selasi observes that “in the peculiar hierarchy of African households, the only rung lower than the motherless child is the childless mother.” This is a sentiment that sixteen-year-old Okomo, the protagonist of Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda (Feminist Press, 2018) understands.
Okomo is both a motherless and fatherless child. Her mother died while giving birth to her, a death the villagers in her hometown ascribe to witchcraft. And since her mother died before her biological father could pay her dowry, she is considered a bastard and belongs to her maternal grandfather. Far from being doted on, she frequently comes under her grandparents’ censure for not being feminine enough since she doesn’t like makeup, wears her hair short, and has failed to bring home a rich lover. On top of that, she is not attracted to men but women; a concept her Fang culture has no word for.
“The sex lives of African girls begin, inevitably, with Uncle.” Taiye Selasi again. However, unlike the predatory uncle in that story, Okomo finds a fellow misfit in Uncle Marcelo, a fam e mina or a “man-woman” in the local parlance, whose refusal to be a real man and reproduce, or so the villagers believe, is causing the crops to fail. It is through his friendship she begins to piece together that there are others like her who do not fit into the strictures of Fang norms.
“But Okomo is not your typical outsider-insider. Her perpetual surprise at everything around her makes her look like she was recently parachuted in.”
But Okomo is not your typical outsider-insider. Her perpetual surprise at everything around her makes her look like she was recently parachuted in. She finds it remarkable that goats wander freely around the village and that the village children are often more undressed than dressed up; her thoughts more at home on the pages of an ethnographer’s field notes than the observations of an Equi Guinean girl who has grown up in the village all her life.
Majority of contemporary, locally-set African fiction takes place in urban spaces. It was therefore refreshing to read work set in a rural community and it made me nostalgic for the village novels of the African Writers Series. Everyone familiar with those literary classics knows that in their pages, forests are not particularly habitable places. At best, they are places of enchantment as in Amos Tutuola’s fantastical ‘My Life In The Bush of Ghosts’. Or worse, as in the evil forests that dot Chinua Achebe’s historical fiction, dumping ground for the breakers of taboo. Obono subverts this trope, presenting the forest as a haven for both Okomo and the Indecency Club, the village’s underground queer community.
“At best, they are places of enchantment as in Amos Tutuola’s fantastical ‘My Life In The Bush of Ghosts’. Or worse, as in the evil forests that dot Chinua Achebe’s historical fiction”
Mirroring traditional coming-of-age initiation rites across the continent, it is also in the shady groves of the forest that Okomo has her first sexual experience with a woman and fully embraces her sexuality. Obono writes a shocking sex scene in a very casual, off-hand manner, which I found worrisome. It could very well be a true that a lot of young people’s first sexual experiences – be they homosexual or heterosexual – often fall on the wrong side of informed consent, and thus, Obono is being realistic in describing the encounter. However, given how much she plays up the villagers’ disregard for autonomy, her inclusion of such a scene feels very much like an own goal.
This is an African novel which challenges the hegemonic view that homosexuality is unAfrican, and will no doubt be regarded as an important LGBT novel. But outside of its ambition and sociological importance, it doesn’t really deliver. The heroine feels more like the author’s mouthpiece for criticism rather than a fully fleshed-out person, and despite the use of first-person narrative, I had to continually remind myself that I was reading a work of fiction, not a thesis. Fiction is all make-believe, and the author has full artistic licence, however, there is no reason why reading a good novel shouldn’t be like watching a master illusionist, the audience aware they are being deceived but at no point ever uncovering the deception. Unfortunately, there is very little sleight of hand here. La Bastarda was obviously written for discourse, rather than entertainment.
“There is no reason why reading a good novel shouldn’t be like watching a master illusionist, the audience aware they are being deceived but at no point ever uncovering the deception.”
But of course, my bias is showing, and I suspect my rigidity concerning how a novel should and should not be written, might just be the kind of thinking Obono is critiquing. Dear Reader, forgive me. My viewpoint is just that, a viewpoint; and my preferences need not be your own. As with any work of art, there are different reasons to enjoy a novel, all valid. If you are the kind of reader who looks to novels for news, you will find plenty here to supplement Equatorial Guinea’s Wikipedia entry; and if you are an arts and humanities scholar looking for a gateway to analyze issues like witchcraft, gender, sexuality, colonialism, or climate change in Africa, this will be perfect for you.
The book is translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel.
Akumbu Uche is a Nigerian writer. Her work has appeared in Bella Naija and Brittle Paper. She lives in Owerri.
