The First Woman: Winner of the Jhalak Prize, 2021

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For me, following Kirabo as she grew up was a delight. I found the book to be absorbing and original. I loved learning about Uganda: the language, traditions, and way of life. The only small criticism I have is that parts of the book were bogged down by too much explanation of minor characters. If you are looking for a book set in Uganda during the 1970s with a strong female protagonist, this book is it! In A Girl Is A Body Of Water we meet young Kirabo who is being raised by her Grandparents in a small village called Nattetta. The story Kirabo was told is that her father, Tom, showed up with her 12 years ago because her mother did not want her. Since then Kirabo have been wondering, who is this woman do left me? She asks questions but no one will give her a straight answer not even Nsuuta, who the villagers call a witch. this is something a bit special. Part family saga, part coming-of-age story, covering topics as wide-ranging as class, ethnicity, wealth, identity, feminism/ mwenkanonkano, culture, love, property, politics and origin, Makumbi's book was an entertaining and enlightening fictional introduction to modern Uganda.

The final strand of Nsutta’s teaching to Kirabo is that in effect much of the policing of the patriarchal society is done by women themselves – she uses the word kweluma to represent how oppressed people turn on each other (something Kirabo recognises as it is her Grandmother rather than her Grandfather or father who seeks to restrain her freedom). Whether or not you’ve seen it, I think most people do know of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ performance as Selina Meyer on HBO’s satirical Veep at least to some extent—she has won a disgusting amount of Emmys. Either way, the character of Selina Meyer can be summed up as a sociopathic alien trying her darndest to imitate a human-being as she claws her way to political power. That, and she becomes America’s first female president. Selina is the kind of narcissist that is the most while doing the least—a true American icon. NASA Engineering Design Challenge– Work in teams to design and build a prototype of a cold fluid storage device and transfer system using everyday items you can find in your classroom or home. (This activity requires leaving the liquids overnight to record the amount of evaporation, plus a second overnight for the redesign.) Coming of age issues; relationships; platonic and romantic, life in school, dysmenorrhea, growing apartIn the end I found the data phenomenal. I found the connections and parallels between their lives and beyond party lines both heartwarming and fascinating. Though I found the commonly accepted infidelity by their husband's abborant I found their unwavering love for their dear husband's life affirming & well basically.... everything. The book does not cover the first ladies chronologically but by topic. Under that topic the author may tell about each of the first ladies or only a few. At times I felt I was being yanked around and some information was repeated. Brower made a point that the majority of the first ladies did not want the position or to be in the spotlight. The author states the role is difficult, hard to quantify and often viewed through a lens of sexism. Brower noted that most of the first ladies became friends transcending political party differences. One of the examples given was that of Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson.

It doesn’t help that Kirabo herself is rather obnoxious and self-centered, which is not uncommon for her age, but for me unpleasantness works better on more dynamic or complex characters. Worse, growing up never involves working on her flaws. I think the reader is intended to have far more sympathy for her stepmother than Kirabo ever does (immediately forgetting Nsuuta’s advice to be forgiving of other women). But Kirabo herself never reaches the point of considering why other people might have made the decisions they did rather than simply lashing out and seeking revenge for her own pain. I was disappointed when even at the end of the book she’s out for vengeance for her birth mother’s abandonment rather than attempting to understand what it would be like to give birth at 13(!) in a society where young single motherhood means an end to dreams for both schooling and marriage, and appreciating that she was raised by many loving relatives. The feminist themes in this book and the strong women were wonderful. I loved how the book examined things like privilege, colorism, relationships, and marriage, and I liked that it did all that while providing a fascinating insight into Ugandan culture and history. I don't actually know that much about Uganda, so it was really fascinating to read about how it was negatively impacted by colonialism, their war with Tanzania, and how the traditional beliefs mixed with and/or superseded the christian ones that were imposed on them from England. Even though the patriarchal rules and expectations are harsh, it was surprisingly refreshing to see how the women still found ways to seize power from within, and how Kirabo, as part of a newer generation, was able to push the boundaries still further because of the efforts of the strong women preceding her. A] gossipy, but surprisingly deep, look at the women who help and sometimes overshadow their powerful husbands.” — USA Today The author did a great job of showcasing feminism and I really enjoyed how that theme was executed. It is not every day I read a book where feminism is at the forefront of the narrative and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As a girl, Kirabo's grandmother impulsively ran naked into a rain shower one day. As much older women, her grandmother and Nsuuta do it again, together.In what I found the strongest part of the book – it then takes what I found an impressively mythical turn, as Nsutta explains her theory that (see the opening quote to my review) Kirabo’s flights are proof that she retains a tie to the First Woman/the original free state of women. She then explains that the myth making of men in all societies (including the story of Kintu – the inspiration for the author’s debut novel) first of all acted to justify the subjugation of the earth to humans and then, crucially, was developed to justify the subjugation of women to men – something which was wider than Africa Kirabo is a young girl of 12. She has been brought up by her paternal grandparents. Her mother left the family when she was small. Her father Tom has married another woman. He lives in another village. NASA released its first digital, interactive graphic novel, "First Woman: NASA's Promise for Humanity," featuring the story of a fictional astronaut, Callie Rodriguez, who is the first woman and person of color to explore the moon. (Image credit: NASA) She wore an Amin, leave-me-alone maxi dress, the fashion after the president banned short skirts.” Entertaining moments

It is a beautiful book for women, about women, that should be read by all men who would like to understand women! About the author Love is blood choosing blood. Nothing to do with the heart. The heart speaks, you can reason with it. But blood? Blood is inexorable. Once it has decided, it has decided.” This is very much a novel about the lives women negotiate for themselves within a patriarchal system, and there are a lot of interesting women in it. There’s Kirabo’s aunt Abi, an independent and liberated single woman who nevertheless hates her brother’s wife for breaking the traditional wifely mold. There’s Nsuuta, the old blind woman with her ideas of sisterhood and sexual equality, who was once a nurse and now claims to be a witch. There are women negotiating their roles within marriage and clan: Nnambi, who’s fighting for a more modern marriage where she can focus on her nuclear family without propitiating her husband’s clan; Gayi, who runs away to marry across ethnic and religious lines; Nsangi, whose age allows her to take an almost patriarchal role in the family. And then there are the more modern boarding school girls, particularly Kirabo’s sweet and ambitious friend Atim, whom I’d have loved to see more of. I wish we could have seen more of all these ladies, and not filtered through Kirabo. The contrast of a rural upbringing versus an urban existence, the striving for and effect of education on girls and the natural way that local Ugandan folklore and ancestral stories are part of a way of living and developing and coming of age, in helping young people travel through their concerns and sorrows and strange feelings and unanswered questions.Stories are critical, Kirabo,” she added thoughtfully. “The minute we fall silent, someone will fill the silence for us.” It’s always fascinating to learn more about the occupants of the White House and learn more about the actual people. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it doesn’t tell you who those people actually are. And while I would say that this book revealed that the First Ladies are normal women like me, that’s not totally true. Constant mention was made of multi room estates, summer homes, or constant traveling and campaigning, which only served to reinforce that, generally speaking, most presidents and First Ladies came from or accumulated money at some point. It sounds like a lot, but really this is a personal, character-driven story about Kirabo and her family. The rest is context—necessary context—but not a history lecture. However, at times the novel does favour explanatory detail over action a little too much. For instance, when Kirabo moves to boarding school, a lot of time is spent establishing this new setting, new characters and social hierarchy… but very little happens there, and the action soon moves away from the school again. Abi and Nsuuta were women I really admired. Even Alikisa was one of the strong women in the life of Kirabo.

There were so many interesting and relevant themes that the author treated in details. I was very impressed. The characters were fascinating and wonderful to explore. The character study this book provided is amazing. The pacing is slow, and it takes some time to round out all the details and bring together the story. Even though it is slow-paced, it still creates an engagement with the reader. There was a vibrant literary culture that women were involved in, in a whole range of ways, before the Norman conquest. There’s a big Latin tradition preceding that which isn’t considered, partly because it’s in Latin and partly because the picture hasn’t been put together,” said Watt. “People might notice isolated cases of women’s writing, but the evidence hasn’t been put together.” Hugeburc's authorship was only discovered in the 20th century, when her name was found to be encrypted in the manuscript The last time Kirabo was at home, before Christmas, she had slept on the roof with Aunt Abi and her next-door neighbours, because across the road the family who lived in the house with a green roof had been massacred.” Watt also argues that an anonymous eighth-century Life of Gregory the Great could have been produced by one of the nuns in Whitby’s double monastery, not necessarily by a monk. “The emphasis on women within the text would seem to reflect the interests of women, which would seem to suggest female authorship,” she said.More so than Tambu in that book though, Kirabo (who is starting to more actively search for her mother) also receives a sexual awakening in the school and grows in her belief in Mwenkanonkano (a word I think the author has coined as a Ugandan version of feminism). With such training, it is not surprising that many of the 400 buildings attributed to Wilbraham show a strong familiarity with both Italian and Dutch (but not French) architecture, which she synthesised into a sophisticated British style. Some of her better known buildings include Belton, Uppark, Winslow, Temple Bar, Windsor Guildhall, the original Burlington House, and St Mary’s Church, Ingestre. She designed Codrington Library, Oxford before Hawksmoor became involved. Her book brings a host of early female writers together, including Leoba, an English missionary and abbess of Tauberbischofsheim in Franconia who died in 782; and Hugeburc, an English nun who joined the Benedictine monastery of Heidenheim. Leoba’s one surviving letter features the earliest example of poetry by an Englishwoman (“Farewell, and may you live long and happily, making intercession for me,” runs Watt’s translation from the Latin), while Hugeburc wrote an account of the lives of the brothers St Willibald and St Winnebald. Hugeburc is seen as the first named English woman writer of a full-length narrative, with her authorship of the text only discovered in the 20th century, when her name was found to be encrypted in the manuscript. Unencrypted, the Latin reads: “ Ego una Saxonica nomine Hugeburc ordinando hec scribebam,” or “I, a Saxon nun named Hugeburc, wrote this”. Firstly I am a huge fan of literature that takes us elsewhere, into the storytelling traditions of other cultures, seen from the inside, but told in a way that doesn't alienate a reader from outside that culture, but has both a particular and universal message.