Fiction

Tomiloju and Ikenna have been best friends since high school. Both academic high flyers, they’ve always had a lot in common and have stayed close without it ever getting romantic. In the years since graduation, they have remained there for each other through personal and professional turmoil. They are each other’s safety net, and as they head for their 20-Year High School Reunion, they are banking on each other for the support they both know they’ll need. They are inseparable the whole weekend…until a slip reveals things weren’t always only platonic for one of them, disrupting their dynamic of over two decades. Can their friendship survive it?

When Chigozie and Obianuju meet in August 1978, it is nothing short of fate. He is the perfect man: charismatic, handsome, Christian, and–most importantly–Igbo. He reminds her of her beloved Uncle Ikenna, her mother’s brother who disappeared fighting in The Civil War that devastated Nigeria less than a decade before. It is why, when Gozie asks her to marry him within months of meeting, she says yes, despite her lingering and uncertain feelings for Akin—a man her mother would never accept, as his tribe fought on the other side of the war. Akin makes her feel heard, understood, intelligent; Gozie makes her heart flutter.

For Uju, the daughter her mother never wanted, marriage would mean the attainment of that long elusive state of womanhood, and something else she has desired all her life—her mother’s approval. All will be well; he is the perfect match, the country will soon be democratic again and the economy is growing, or so she thinks.

Loosely based on the stories of real women known to the author, Tomorrow I Become a Woman follows a complex relationship between mother and daughter as they grapple to come to terms with tremendous loss. This powerful debut by Aiwanose Odafen is a sensitive exploration of a woman’s struggle to meet societal and cultural expectations within the confines of a difficult marriage, a tribute to female friendship and a love story that spans two decades and continents against a backdrop of political turmoil and a fast-changing world.

“Men are like yam, you cut them how you like.”

Baba Segi has three wives, seven children, and a mansion filled with riches. But now he has his eyes on Bolanle, a young university graduate wise to life’s misfortunes. When Bolanle responds to Baba Segi’s advances, she unwittingly uncovers a secret which threatens to rock his patriarchal household to the core.