Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe

 I read Chika Unigwe's first book On Black Sisters Street a few years ago and it was an awesome read. I recommended it to several of my friends and those who actually read it loved it. So when I read in Pride Magazine that she had a new book, I went straight to Waterstones' website and ordered a copy. So here we go..

This book centres on a very dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. Mma grew up with no family other than her mother Eze. She had no sense of who she was and where she came from. Her biggest issue though was that she didn’t know who her father was and when she asked Ezi she was given the same answer “You don’t have a father”, Ezi never explained further, was he dead? Alive? A dead-beat? A wife beater? One of the big men who used to spend the night and pay their rent? As a young girl Mma felt the you-don’t-have-a-father line that her mother fed her and all who asked deprived her of friends; no mother wanted their daughter to be seen with the fatherless girl who’s mother was well-to-do by no known means and who made no apology for her lack of a husband or a father for her child. As a young woman, no young man wanted to marry a fatherless girl from an unknown background with no family or male relatives to ask for her hand marriage. Needless to say, Mma grew up loathing her mother for all the things she felt Eze had deprived her of.

So here’s the story, Eze died leaving Mma with a very healthy inheritance, a bevy of unanswered questions and a handwritten copy of her memoirs. Why Eze could only tell Mma the truth about her past and her family in death baffles me, I mean I get that she was trying to protect Mma, but in so doing she kept Mma from the very thing that would set her free her and actually allow them to have a decent relationship, the truth. Anyway, Mma reluctantly read Eze’s memoirs and unearthed shocking, sad and painful secrets about the circumstances of her birth, the life her mother had left behind and the realisation that Eze had done everything in her power to give Mma a good life. Ezi’s memoirs led Mma to the family that she always yearned for. She found her grandfather who to her dismay expected her to apologise for her mother’s refusal to conform to cultural norms, which much like her mother made no sense to her. She found her father, the seemingly perfect man who judged others yet fell by the very same vice. She found Rapu the woman who was destined to be a blessing to her family yet did this by wrecking havoc on Ezi’s family and lived in the fear that Mma had returned to reclaim what rightfully belonged to herself and her mother.

Sadly, it was only in death that Mma learnt just who her mother was; a woman who refused to conform to the expectations of others and refused to be judged for the hand life had dealt her. Mma learnt to appreciate how much Eze had loved and sacrificed for her, but at this point Eze was already dead and buried.

On to the next book, Looking for Transwonderland. Travels in Nigeria  by Noo Saro-Wiwa. Do u recognise the name? She is the daughter of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
See you next month.
Byye