#4: Will It Get Better?

A Review of Ogadinma by Ukamaka Olisakwe

Greetings! 👋🏽

I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself.
Welcome to another edition of The Reader’s Perspective newsletter.

Ogadinma tells the story of a young Igbo girl as she navigates a deeply patriarchal system and struggles to gain her freedom. It is the author’s second book, published in 2020.

Away from the hype on social media, I was drawn to this book because of the title. Ogadinma means "everything will be all right” or simply put, “e go better.”

It's one of the phrases I heard a lot during my national service year in Imo state. It's an expression of hope of sorts, maybe even a prayer that a bad situation will not always remain that way, that the tides will turn and the story will change.

The protagonist of this absolutely captivating novel, Ogadinma, however did not wait for the prayer of her name to save her. She fought for her life when things took a turn for the worse in the marriage she was subtly pressured into.

Her father sent her to live with his brother and his family, after he found out she had an abortion. He did not care to know how she even got pregnant, he just beat the living daylight out of her and sent her packing.

She meets her aunty’s brother, Tobe, and they fall in love, or at least, that’s what our naïve protagonist thinks. They are married shortly after, but not without her discovering that he had a terrible temper. She simply resolves to always behave well so she does not upset him.

As fate would have it, Tobe loses his job, money and everything he held dear not long after. He gradually becomes a shadow of himself and evolves into a beast. First, a slap then an apology and the cycle continues, only worse each time.

When Ogadinma leaves her husband the first time and goes to her father, bruises and all, he replies her narration of the ordeal with, “you think you have endured what others haven’t?” and reminds her about the sacrifices he made for her as her father. Smh.

It is the reduction of her problematic and potentially dangerous situation to a commonplace and therefore, flimsy occurrence that annoys me the most about this story; probably because it’s something we have heard time and again. Ndi every woman must know how to carry her cross in a way that it won’t make her fall.

Ogadinma’s father takes her back to her abusive husband. They hold a family meeting where the men in attendance scold Tobe for “behaving like a mad man” and Aunty Ngozi tells Ogadinma that she must learn to keep family problems within the family. I bet we know how the rest of this part of the story goes.

For Ogadinma, it’s how her husband neither apologises nor talks about the issue that unnerves her. She soon realises that he would never regret hitting her and that she had to accept the situation. This, to me, was the first step to her freedom.

When her friend, Ejiro, visits her and starts asking questions, Ogadinma defends Tobe, telling Ejiro that, "my husband is not capable of murder in Jesus’ name” and assuring her that it will not happen again, even though she did not believe it herself.

Ejiro refuses to accept that and tells her the story of her sister, Odion, who was killed by her abusive husband. Ogadinma cries helplessly but I like to think this gave her a little push.

It took some time but she finally got there. We see her become resilient such that at the end of the book, she’s a woman who fights for herself. Our dear girl no longer cared about cultural expectations and against all odds, she finds the strength to run for her dear life…literally.

In the part of the world where the book is set, it's almost taboo for women to consider putting themselves first or make decisions based on what may be good for them, so this is huge for Ogadinma.

I liked the turn of events because she did not sit and wait in spineless hope for things to get better for her. She realised that she had to look out for herself and she did not let anyone take that from her.

I am a firm believer that you only have yourself and that if you don’t like a situation, you have to do something about it. May the odds be in your favour.

Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Leave a comment, maybe? 😉

If you read this book after reading this review, do come back and share 😊

---