Book Review: “I am your husband and you are my wife and I just know that we will make it work.
You’ll see. We will make it work. None of that thing with Ndidi matters.”
“The answer is simple. You haven’t tried enough. And if all else fails, you will at least give me a son.”
Words uttered by a heart broken man, on the night he discovers the woman he had married was his only in physical form, her embodiment his, but in flesh alone, flesh that merely went through the duty bound and conjugal motions of marriage. A man desperately trying to hold on as he realises that his wife’s heart will always belong to another.
The wife in question is Ijeoma and her story does not start here.
At a young and impressionable age, Ijeoma’s father commits suicide, with no fight left in him he willingly sits through an air raid refusing to run for cover (just once more) to the bunker. His wife’s desperate pleas fall on deaf ears, as he obstinately responds, “You two go on. I’ll be alright. Just let me be.” And just like that he gave up on life.
With the tragic loss of her father Ijeoma begins to realize that the nature of life is change.
With the weight of her husband’s brutal death and the war on her shoulder, Ijeoma’s mother makes a tough call-she places her daughter under the care of family friends (the grammar school teacher and his wife) for what was meant to be a short period (well, so she assured her daughter). Their separation is not only heart wrenching but stoic on the part of Ijeoma who walked away from her mother forcing herself to hold back tears, forcing herself not to look back, resisting the temptation to run shamelessly back to her mother.
Ijeoma walked on remembering her mother’s parting words.
“If God dishes you rice in a basket. Do not wish for soup.”
In her new hovel of a home, the so called family friends are quick to renege on their promise to educate Ijeoma as payment for her assistance with household chores but keep her solely as their house-girl.
Forced to rely on her own company at an unexpected moment-under an Udala tree, she befriends a lassie by the name of Amina. The two become inseparable as they share chores, life experiences and each other.
The unacceptable nature of their bond is exposed one fateful night bringing an unforeseen end to Ijeoma’s stay with her ‘care-givers’ and as if by reflex resurrects her mother from the wood works.
With an unrelenting zeal to ‘fix’ her daughter, she painstakingly Bible thumps Ijeoma with lesson upon lesson-after all the demons had to be exorcised.
In her quest to be ‘normal’ Ijeoma conforms and marries a childhood friend Chibundu leaving behind yet another forbidden lover, Ndidi. As a result her marriage is not without its challenges as she maintains strong emotional ties with her leman.
Under the weight of it all her husband Chibundu gradually mutates into a monster as he fails to control his life and wife.
Frustrated, he becomes emotionally and verbally abusive. Subsequently Ijeoma leaves her marriage and seeks refuge in the arms of her mother-who with time, albeit with considerable effort, had come to accept her daughter, deciding to let things be.
Ijeoma’s life is not an unfamiliar story, raised in a culture that strongly looked on being married as the sole destiny of a woman, it was her mother’s responsibility to see to it that she ticked-off the most important box. In her mother’s eyes anything that deviated from the norm was not only regarded with suspicion but an outright abomination. To quote her mother, “What was the point of existing in the world as a partially functioning human being?”
In a tale that is heartbreaking, raw and emotional, Okparanta reveals that it at times takes extra strength to conform than to just be.
In her unwavering commitment to kowtow, Ijeoma choked under the weight of something larger, heavier and weighty. The weight of tradition, culture, religion and superstition. Till she could bear no more.
In a world in which so many voices speak, voices of religion, voices of culture, voices of the law and the voice of self-etc. How then does one decide? Which voice should trump all?
Though primarily centered on forbidden love. There are other issues that Okparanta touches on. In particular, male-child preference.
The birth of male children still largely remains a source of pride and honour, while that of female children is seen as failure. A problem that is still prevalent in most families, a way of thinking that cuts across races, tribes and social class.
In anticipation of a son (though unconfirmed), Chibundu rejects his first child, Chidinma (a girl) by directing his affections towards the neighour’s son, Sonto. This he does by purchasing toys (meant for his unborn son) and strictly inviting Sonto to enjoy them. It is only when Ijeoma miscarries that he starts to reflect on the error of his ways.
With the rise of fragmented families that are diaspora-driven we are witnessing a fair number of guardian-parenting set ups mushrooming, another family dynamic Okparanta reconnoiters well. For innumerable personal reasons parents pass on their children to a more apt relation or family-friend as they go in search of greener pastures-leaving behind loved ones. A tough call to make- that often puts innocent and vulnerable children at the mercy of care givers.
Set against the backdrop of war, ‘Under the Udala Trees’ tells a story of loss, forbidden love, tough-parenting and failed relationships all centered on one woman’s struggle with self. Okparanta’s debut novel is undoubtedly an exceptional piece of work that provokes a spectrum of emotions in its readers from start to finish.
Chinelo Okparantra was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and moved with her family to the US at the age of ten. She received her BSc from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University and her MFA from Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her stories have been featured in the New Yorker and Granta. In 2017, Okparanta was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Under the Udala Trees is her first novel. She is a winner of a 2014 Lambda Literary Award, a 2016 Lambda Literary Award, the 2016 Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award in Fiction, the 2016 Inaugural Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle, and a 2014 O. Henry Prize. Other honors include shortlisting for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award, a 2017 Amelia Bloomer Project Selection (of the American Library Association), a nomination for the 2016 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award, and a nomination for the 2016 NAACP Image Award in Fiction.
