#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

Ada is a young Nigerian woman whose mother is having serious health problems. Because of money, they don’t go to the hospital soon enough, so her mother suffers. Because of money, they don’t get the care they need that could save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada will turn to a night of prostitution to try to raise enough money to save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada’s mother will die soon after hearing of her daughters sacrifice. Because of money, Ada, already ashamed of herself, will think her mother died disappointed in her as well.

Notable Passage: “And so there were silences, as if we no longer valued spoken words, as if spoken words were gaudy finishes on a delicate piece of art, unnecessary distractions from the masterpiece, whose substance was more meaningfully experienced if left unornamented.”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#774 Story, Story!- Chinelo Okparanta

#774 Story, Story!- Chinelo Okparanta

A new woman is seen on Sunday coming to the small church on Rumuola road. Nneoma sees that she is pregnant and is happy to welcome her to the congregation. She begins telling her a story. It’s a story she told to another four years ago, also pregnant. She tells this story as the pastor is giving his sermon. By the end, she is in tears and the woman invites her to dinner. That was the outcome she had hoped. The horror of her plan comes clear by the end, even she is not sure whether she will go through with it, again.

Four stories in this collection, Happiness, like Water, and I haven’t felt any real connection with them yet. They’re fine stories, just not evoking the emotions that I can see are there. 

Rating: 7-6-5-5 Total= 23

#746 Fairness- Chinelo Okparanta

#746 Fairness- Chinelo Okparanta

Inside a Nigerian aristocratic family, the woman are wishing for better things. They want the things they see in American fashion magazines. The mother knows that if her daughter were to study in America, things would be better for everybody. They associate American things and American images as promise for opportunity. 

Taking these feelings to heart, the schoolgirls of this community associate lighter skin for fairness. They see a classmate with lighter skin and feel enough envy that she is no longer part of their clique. The girls try and bleach their skin with disastrous results. Even with the scabs they imagine peeling them off and having pink skin albeit temporarily.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#718 Wahala- Chinelo Okparanta

#718 Wahala- Chinelo Okparanta

The difference between pleasure and pain is sometimes in the eye of the beholder, or the perspective of who is watching. Chibuzo and his wife Ezinne have had trouble with having a child. It has been continually stressful as the failure to get pregnant becomes more a public embarrassment. It is known in the village that negative energy coming from the community can effect having a child or not.

“Surely, the rumors said, apathy had a way of creating negative energy, and this negative energy had the ability to reinforce itself in the barrenness of one’s womb.”

They visit a medicine woman and she confirms that Ezinne is “Cursed by the enchanted” and needs to be cleansed before she can conceive a child. After the procedure, they have a dinner for neighbors to give her a positive surrounding before trying again. Of course, there is something actually medically wrong with Ezinne and despite the wishes and hopes of everyone around them, her pain and inability to get pregnant will not be changed by mere ritual.

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#676 On Ohaeto Street- Chinelo Okparanta

#676 On Ohaeto Street- Chinelo Okparanta

“Here are Nigerian woman at home and transplanted to the United States, building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love.” 

That is the back cover description of Chinelo OKparanta’s 2013 collection, Happiness, Like Water. It’s hard not to read that and think of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection, That Thing Around Your Neck, that we’ve already read for this project. But, that’s not a bad thing. Comparison is a part of analysis. I am looking forward reading this.

We begin with this story. Chinwe and her mother live on Ohaeto street, her father now dead. They get visited by a young Jehova’s Witness named Eze. At first Chinwe won’t invite him in, but her mother sees something in the young man, and they talk for a while. Besides spreading the good word, he is looking to start a family but he will only marry a woman who is also a Witness. After several friendly visits, Chinwe agrees at her mother’s prodding to convert and become Eze’s husband.

Meanwhile the surrounding townships are falling to a gang of thieves. When their neighborhood agrees to make a deal with the thieves and pay them off, Eze refuses to contribute, so he and Chinwe become a target. Eze is a wealthy and ostentatious so the robbers come pretty quickly. They survive the attack, but it becomes clear that Eze is more worried about protecting his wealth that his wife, she decides to leave.

There is strong commentary here about patriarchal constructs in religion, and the subjugation of independent woman for “stability.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29