The Middle Daughter

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It’s a clinic or a home in which pregnant women are housed – with and sometimes without their consent- and their babies, when they are born are sold to new parents. And because it takes place in Nigeria, I enjoyed reading about the food, the housing, and the people as well. The otherness that was prophesied in her name manifests consistently and drives her into exile for several years. nani’s story is simply tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, my heart felt so heavy as i made my way through this book, exacerbated by the fact that this story is the reality of many women today. She therefore fails to notice his malevolent intent and by the time she has been drawn into his web, her fear of her mother’s anger and rejection leads her to make a choice that leads her “down to deepest dark”.

The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe | World Literature Today

There were moments when I had to put the book down to sit in what I had read, and there were other times that I kept going because I HAD to know what would happen next. Her work—profiteering from teenage fertility—isn’t exactly Demeter’s either, but the business does take a nosedive after Nani’s marriage to Ephraim. The family is very well-to-do: Doda had an important civil service job and Mother has recently opened the highly lucrative “Rejoice Maternity Clinic. So here’s why this book was hard for me—it was SO HARD to read about the abuse that Nani faced, and how much she endured before she was able to get out of the situation. Nani and her younger sister Ugo, soon find out there their mother’s lucrative clinic is a baby making factory.

yes, these issues are important and yes they need to be dealt with expeditiously, but there are women in the world, particularly in third world countries, who would rather take the reality of oppression in the western world than in their own country, because how privileged are we to not live in fear of being burned alive if we reject a marriage proposal. But instead of building a better future with him, Nani is forced too soon into a challenging womanhood with an oppressive husband. This can be particularly difficult in some parts of the world, and The Middle Daughter demonstrates this. She meets and forms a friendship with a Ephraim, a guy who is deeply religious, quotes the Bible and has a very verbose vocabulary that he loves to show off.

The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe — Dzanc Books

Partway through, apparently slow on the uptake, I happened to glance at a blurb on the back cover which, to my surprise, described it as a retelling of the myth of Persephone.It is a very composed novel, never saying more than it needs to; the pacing, the length, the character development was spot on. At about the halfway point, I thought Unigwe was just spinning her wheels, her novel mired in melodrama and going nowhere.

The Middle Daughter - Wikipedia

Unigwe holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. I am aware of my privilege to be in a situation where I could get help if I needed, and I would like to hope that I could. The mother of the protagonist in The Middle Daughter has an unusual job: she’s a trained midwife with a clinic that functions as a baby factory.Whilst Nani, struggles to overcome the grief, her mother and younger sister seemed to have moved on. Nigerian author Chika Unigwe takes readers on a journey of loss, grief, and, ultimately, redemption. We meet Nani, a young woman who in the course of mourning for her father and resenting her family for moving on too soon, falls into the hands of Ephraim, a wicked preacher who will go on to unleash an untold acts of violence and oppression on her, after he tricks her into a sham marriage. The resulting grief leads her to find comfort with a preacher man, but she soon finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage.

Chika Unigwe Chika Unigwe

Unfortunately as heartbreaking and emotionally grueling as Nani’s story turned out to be, I was unable to suspend disbelief enough to feel fully submerged into her reality. I wanted to right the wrongs done to Persephone and give her a voice, make her in charge of her own story”.I didn't like the beginning of this book, the main character's grief doesn't seem a