Written by contributor Jeanette Zhukov
“That day, I tell myself that even if I am not getting anything in this life, I will go to school. I will finish my primary and secondary and university schooling and become teacher because I don’t just want to be having any kind voice… I want a louding voice.”
In her emotionally striking debut novel, Abi Daré depicts the trials of a 14-year-old Nigerian girl, Adunni, in The Girl with the Louding Voice. Having won 2018’s The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts, Daré explores a young girl’s fight for education during a period in her life where it seems like the odds are against her. Full of twists and turns, the novel goes on to explore themes of loss, poverty, persistence, importance of education, and female empowerment.
Beginning in her home village of Ikati, Adunni learns from her father that he has arranged for her marriage to a much older man, Morufu. This arrangement is made under the terms that Morufu, a successful taxi driver, would pay a bride-price for Adunni, which consists of the family’s community rent. Vehemently against the decision, Adunni begs her father to remember the promise he made to her dead mother, that Adunni would be allowed to continue her education and not be married off at a young age. Yet due to her family’s lack of money and living in a male dominated society, Adunni is forced to leave her two brothers and father to be the third wife of an unpleasant man. From there, Adunni embarks on a physical and personal journey that begins with the powerlessness of an unwanted marriage and then on to the continued constraints of being a household servant, all while fighting for something other than the physically oppressive roles to which she has been subjected. (Trigger warnings for sexual abuse and violence.)
The novel is told through the eyes of Adunni in a first person point-of-view, thus the story’s language depicts her English dialect. While the language may seem disorienting at first, Adunni’s voice and her use of language is a reflection of her community while growing up, as well as her level of education. The decision to write in Adunni’s voice creates a deeply intimate look into the mind of the young girl. The reader comes to understand Adunni as a friend, rooting for her dreams and successes, while also mourning with her through her pain. Adunni’s voice is ultimately a unique one in the text, while grammatically different, it also is embedded with her passion for learning and her unabashed views. While reading the novel through her point-of-view, Adunni truly begins to have a “louding voice.”
One of the novel’s other strengths is its ability to captivate the reader through its evolving and multifaceted plotline. What originates as Adunni wanting to have an education and being forced into marriage, evolves to hold other dynamics and thematic explorations. Adunni undergoes a journey, while starting her tale in the village of Ikati, circumstances force Adunni to leave and eventually end up as a servant in a mansion in Lagos. Having herself grown up in Lagos, Daré examines the socioeconomic differences between the locations of a small and quiet village and a bustling and prosperous city. The culture shock that Adunni experiences become another aspect she is forced to navigate and part of her education. A story of personal growth and education quickly melds with that of a story of survival. Containing a subplot surrounding a mysterious disappearance, Adunni also finds herself investigating the fate of a young woman that resembles her own powerless situation.
While men have instigated the unfortunate circumstances in her life, female friendships play a significant role in Adunni’s mindset. Adunni’s subjugation in a male dominated society is just one aspect that continues to make her a relatable character. Yet her passion for education is born through her mother’s insistence and fostered by the other female relationships that she develops onward. For Adunni, an education will be the answer to all of her problems. As she is reeling and still mourning the loss of her mother throughout the text, her continued insistence that she will go to school and become a teacher is her motivation and allows her to continue to honour her mother’s memory. Education is also linked to freedom throughout the novel because of its association to a career that will produce income, though Adunni’s desire for education is not only self-serving as she wants to help others in her community. The relationship of Adunni’s access to education and money is just one juxtaposition in the novel in regards to the sociopolitical climate of Nigeria. Also scattered throughout the novel are various Nigerian facts, which aim to help the reader, as well as Adunni, understand various disparities ranging from economic, gender, and religion within one of the wealthiest countries in Africa.
Though the plot feels as if it is ever-evolving, the novel is slow paced. Yet it does a beautiful job at capturing Adunni’s emotions and the relationships with the people in her life. There is a sense of wanting and tone of sadness when some characters leave the narrative. Ultimately the ending is hopeful, but it would have been nice to see Adunni’s life years into the future and to see the woman she has become.
Overall, The Girl with the Louding Voice is an intricately told story of resilience of a young woman as she is faced with the complexities of the society in which she lives. Daré delivers a story of introspection and of hope in the modern world.
The Girl with the Louding Voice is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni’s father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.
When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.
But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can—in a whisper, in song, in broken English—until she is heard.
