Adunni is a tough young woman determined to have a voice and emerge from her oppressive situation, and she's wonderfully dogged, creative, and spirited.
“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,” I say. “I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping.”
Adunni is a young teen growing up in a rural Nigerian village where girls are often married off by age fourteen and are frequently made to stop attending school even earlier in life.
She's curious, talkative, joyful, and full of song. Being thrust into a polygamous marriage with a husband twice her age--and the sense that she has been sold off by her widowed father for her dowry--isn't enough to break her. The deaths of the few people who show her love and affection slow her down but don't stop her. Being tricked into working as an unpaid, abused slave without freedoms or even time to sleep doesn't make her give up. Adunni just needs that one glimmer; a spark; a single kindness; one person who really sees her to inspire her to keep going, and against all odds she continues to find enough strength to get her through.
Adunni experiences tremendous emotional, physical, familial, and societal hardships, yet she keeps her sights set on getting back into school and escaping the grim, constricting situations she's been forced into. She's a tough young woman determined to have a voice and emerge from her oppressive situation, and she's wonderfully dogged, creative, and spirited.
My friend Kirstan recommended this book, and I listened to it as an audiobook, which I adored.
“Who knows what else tomorrow will bring? So, I nod my head yes, because it is true, the future is always working, always busy unfolding better things, and even if it doesn’t seem so sometimes, we have hope of it.”
Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?
Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and has lived in the United Kingdom for eighteen years. This is her first book, but hopefully not her last.
I'd love to hear what you think about this book!