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Under the Udala Trees

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In Nigeria, both Christianity and Islam establish strict, largely patriarchal, systems of government that centralize power. This is because the systems that establish the authority of these religions in Nigeria were developed concurrently with colonization. In the South, South-West and Eastern parts of Nigeria, Christianity was used to establish and expand European colonial authority. While Islam in the North and North-West Nigeria predates European colonisation, the establishment of Islam in West-Africa was also an attempt to centralize and expand power by pre-colonial Hausa Kingdoms. This worked so well that even after the fall of the Hausa Kingdoms to the Sokoto Caliphate in the 1800s, European colonizers were able to use established religious governing structures to consolidate their power. A real talent. [ Under the Udala Trees is] the kind of book that should have come with a cold compress kit. It’s sad and sensual and full of heat.” — John Freeman, Electric Literature I was actually nearly convinced that this was a memoir, it rings so true. It's not, but the author has stated that some details are based on her mother's experiences in Nigeria. It feels like a family story.

She continued along, leaving a trail of kisses on her way down to my belly. She traveled farther, beyond the belly, farther than we had ever gone. I moaned and surrendered myself to her. I did not until then know that a mouth could make me feel that way when placed in that part of the body where I had never imagined a mouth to belong. also compares Amina to a water goddess, expressing here some form of same‑sex desire: “Her hair hung in long clumps around her face, like those images of Mami Wata, hair writhing like serpents” (105). The alliteration in /h/ could point to the sounds of pleasure, the moaning sounds, that will be produced during the sexual intercourse between the two teenagers; the mere sight of Amina makes Ijeoma feel short of breath. Homoerotic passages pervade the text and climax in a shared moment of daily life, particularly when the two teenagers prepare dinner: “That evening, Amina and I peeled the yams together, rinsed them together, our fingers brushing against each other’s in the bowl” (106). Peeling yams carries here an extremely sensual and/or sexual connotation, and the idea of a lesbian couple is undoubtedly conveyed. Speaking of dreams, there are quite a few in this novel, as the main character sometimes wrestles with reality through dreams. You know how it is, when you have so much on your mind, so much to philosophize, but there's no one to truly talk to because your inner life must remain a secret?I'd be surprised if no one else has yet described the book as the "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" for Nigeria. Like that book, it's a coming-of-age story; a personal, painful look at what it is like to first fall in love with another woman, in an environment where lesbians are treated harshly (in this book, even killed) and denounced by so-called Christianity. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does. Born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. But when their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself—and there is a cost to living inside a lie. The novel is told in a first person narrative from the protagonist's viewpoint, namely Ijeoma, and as such, the story is told with her voice and perspective. Zabus, Chantal. “Out in Africa: Queer Desire in Some Anthropological and Literary Texts.” Comparative Critical Studies 6.2 (2009): 251-70. Felski, Rita. “The Novel of Self-Discovery: A Necessary Fiction?” Southern Review 19.2 (1986): 131-48.

It goes without saying that it is easier for Okparanta to write such a story when we know that she (...) In Walking with Shadows, Jude Dibia uses an epigraph by Alfred North Whitehead: “What is morality i (...)Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel).” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. 10-59. there is little doubt that in a patriarchal society it cannot be the case for women. Indeed, as Ellen Morgan argues,

When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote Half of a Yellow Sun in 2006, she too offered a new (feminine) (...)

Book contents

It is with this delicateness and darkness that Chinelo Okparanta’s debut novel unfolds: it is a war story and a love story. With language that Taiye Selasi calls “boldly unadorned,” Under the Udala Trees is written in a folkloric cadence, a music that echoes the many Nigerian war stories and songs that are woven into the book. When I was in a graduate student in the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program, Okparanta’s story “America” published that year in Granta, made the rounds amongst my classmates. This story, from a writer we had not heard of, was subtle, steady, possessing an exactness of prose that seemed to celebrate the sentence as much as it did the lives of the Nigerian women it portrayed. We revered its elegance and its heart. According to Marxist critic Fredric Jameson in his article “Third-World Literature in the Era of Mu (...) A Warm, Woolly Silence: Rethinking Silence through T.O. Molefe's ‘Lower Main’ & Monica Arac de Nyeko's ‘Jambula Tree’ Under the Udala Trees is an evocative, fiercely told story about a woman's life, about family and love, and about becoming who you are meant to be. Okparanta is an incendiary, essential voice Popescu, Lucy (2016). " 'Under the Udala Trees', by Chinelo Okparanta". The Financial Times. ProQuest 1768493509.

Amina eventually succumbs to religious guilt, which brings with it a slew of gruesome nightmares, while Ijeoma resists the pull of guilt for as long as possible, before bending to her mother’s will. A loss for both, it would appear. Teenage romance and the naturalness of lesbian love Perhaps the most important and relatable aspect of the book for young readers at the brink of exploring their sexuality is the fact that both Ijeoma and Amina are early teens when they meet and fall in love. They defy the narrative that homosexuality is a learned habit, and with each other they discover their attraction. There is no hesitation in this thought, no questioning of whether this is organic or not. They simply let their feelings for each other consume them. It is only when the Bible scriptures are brought to their attention – only when they feel the external and disapproving gaze of those that judge them – that, like Adam and Eve, they feel shame in the ‘nakedness’. Their innocent attraction to each other provides a silent lesson on what love truly is, and what it means to accept those we love. By contrast, external gazes on their relationship provide an explanation of where shame comes from, how we learn it, and the damaging consequences it may have. The bunker

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But in the end her love for her daughter triumphed and that was really satisfying for me “God, who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough.”

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