Greetings! 👋🏽
I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself.
Welcome to another edition of The Reader’s Perspective newsletter.
Daughters Who Walk This Path is a poignant story set in Ibadan, around the 1970s that tells Morayo’s story. Her life is altered when she’s raped by her cousin, leaving her with a burden she carries into a troubled adulthood.
It also explores some Yoruba customs and traditions. It is the author’s first book and it was published in 2012. Even though it’s a rather tragic story, the book feels warm somehow (maybe because I was born in Ibadan) and made a solid read for me. 10/10.
When Morayo blurts out during dinner one evening that her cousin, Bros T, who was living with them had been coming to her room at night, her parents do not say anything. The next day, they just take the cousin back home to his mother and Morayo is left to deal with the aftermath. She is twelve years old.
In Nigeria, it is not unusual to have one or more relatives live with a family. What’s also not unusual are the sordid attempts of people to cover up certain “incidents” and pretend they never happened. Better to keep it within the family and not let other people know things that can bring shame to them.
When trauma is dismissed, the victims don’t get help. Morayo's case is not an exception; her mother would not talk about what her cousin did to her. Only her aunt, Morenike (who was also raped) understands her turmoil and helps her through her journey of healing. This makes me wonder if we really have to suffer the same fate as someone to have some empathy towards them.
The book also touches on the subject of considering girls who are raped or pregnant at a young age as fallen from grace and as such, must not be allowed to contaminate others. Their praises of being good children no longer ring in the streets. We see this with Morayo's mother attempting to protect her sister, Eniayo.
Morayo still got a happy ending but there’s the possibility that she wouldn’t have suffered as much if she did not feel so alienated by her mother. Bad as it was, it was not really her fault; she did not know better, as we see her confess years later that she did not know how to start the conversation with her daughter. She felt like she had failed her.
Mothers can only tell and teach their daughters what they know. It is important for us not to pass on a culture of shame and undesirability unless we bend over backwards to check certain boxes. If we start learning now, we will know more to teach our daughters. Titlope Sonuga's Feast comes to mind.
We have to do better with our daughters and other young girls around us, to teach them and be the guide some of us needed growing up. Navigating life is increasingly tough these days, more so for women. The coming generations of women need us.
I hope to have children someday in the near future and I will make it my life-long mission to teach them everything I know. Until then, I’ll keep learning.
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 😊