I  finished reading this book a couple of months and I can’t stop thinking about it. More so about the criticisms than anything. 

For people that favor African Literature, Chimamanda is an automatic buy for us. And we typically expect greatness from her. Everyone’s favorite Chimamanda book is Half of a yellow Sun, more on that later. What I am saying is we expect so much from her and I fear people think this book didn’t live up to the expectations! I haven’t read a review where anyone hated it outright but it’s been “it was okay, I was bored, took me a while to get through…” and same because I didn’t eat it up like I was expecting to. That said,

I’m definitely going to read it again!

This is one book where the author’s note should have been at the beginning rather than the end. After reading the author’s note the book made more sense and a surface level reading didn’t do it justice. And she says so. She mentioned the book was born from a place of losing her mother and her intention was to explore mother daughter relationships. Hindsight, I see it but I didn’t grasp it while I was reading it. It was almost as if the mother daughter relationship was an aside, but after reading the author’s note, I see how this book’s true essence is about WOMANHOOD. So I want to read it again to really deep it. I was too focused on the romantic relationships. But looking at Chiamka’s thirst for love, I can see how she wanted to mimick her mother’s life and Zikora coming to understanding on what her own mom went through by what she herself went through. That her mother too although married had faced abandonment. 

One of the criticisms of the book is that it’s too male-centered. I’m sorry to say but DE-CENTERING MEN only lives on TikTok and TikTok alone. Being African (Ghanaian) men are integral part of our communities whether good or bad, they dey inside. Even thinking about Omelogor to be the “feminist” she tried to be, she needed to center a man, her boss, in way. Make sure his ego was stroked, lie for and with him, entertain all kinds of things. Chimamanda did a good job of showing how men are tied into womanhood. 

About Half of a Yellow Sun, I feel like most of us are so attached to it because we read it at a time where we were coming into our Africaness or coming into/forming our identities. So we really can’t get past it and I think Chimamanda wants us to get past it.