Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: No Prompt

Because there is still no prompt this week, I decided to feature books written by female African writers. This aligns with this month’s Women’s History Month and my goal to expand my reading horizon beyond the Americas and Europe.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: The Family
Author: Buchi Emecheta
Publisher: George Braziller
Publishing Date: 1990 (1989)
No. of Pages: 239

Synopsis: 

Born into poverty in Jamaica, deserted when her parents emigrate, and raped by an “uncle” at age nine, Gwendolen Brillianton is happy to be summoned to London to care for the siblings she has never met – but being reunited with her family does not solve her problems, or theirs. Not until she has again been the victim of rape and has left home does Gwendolen begin to understand that she must take control of her own life. Widely known and respected for her stories of black women struggling with the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity, Buchi Emecheta hs written a painfully engrossing tale of bravery in the face of familial disintegration.

Title: Idu
Author: Flora Nwapa
Publisher: Heinemann International
Publishing Date: 1989 (1970)
No. of Pages: 218

Synopsis: 

‘What we are all praying for is children. What else do we want if we have children?’ These two sentences from Idu contain the basic theme of the book, a novel set in a small Nigerian town where the life of the individual is woven into that of the community as a whole. For long it appears as though Idu is unable to have a child, and her husband Adiewere even takes a second wife. But finally Idu gives birth to a fine boy, Ijoma. But it is not until Ijoma is four years old that Idu becomes pregnant for a second time. Before her second child arrives, however, Adiewere mysteriously dies. Idu flouts all conventions by refusing to marry her husband’s brother, preferring to follow her husband to the next world. Clearly, children are not the only thing she wants from life.

Title: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Author: Meryem Alaoui
Translator (from French): Emma Ramadan
Publisher: Other Press
Publishing Date: 2020 (2018)
No. of Pages: 281

Synopsis: 

Thirty-four-year-old prostitute Jmiaa reflects on the bustling world around her with a brutal honesty, but also a quick wit that cuts through the drudgery. Like many of the women in her working-class Casablanca neighborhood, Jmiaa struggles to earn enough money to support herself and her family – often including the deadbeat husband who walked out on her and their young daughter. While she doesn’t despair about her profession like her roommate, Halima, who reads the Quran between clients, she still has to maintain a delicate balance between her reality and the “respectable” one she paints for her own more conservative mother.

This daily grind is interrupted by the arrival of an aspiring young director, Chadlia, whom Jmiaa takes to calling “Horse Mouth.” Chadlia enlists Jmiaa’s help on a film project, initially just to make sure the plot and dialogue are authentic. But when she’s unable to find an actress who’s right for the starring role, she turns again to Jmiaa, giving the latter an incredible opportunity for a better life.

In her breakout debut novel, Meryem Alaoui creates a vibrant picture of the day-to-day challenges faced by working people in Casablanca, which they meet head-on with resourcefulness and resilience.

Title: Changes
Author: Ama Ata Aidoo
Publisher: The Women’s Press Ltd.
Publishing Date: November 1991
No. of Pages: 166

Synopsis: 

In this lively and touching novel about Esi, freshly separated from her husband and confronted with the near impossibility of finding male love and companionship on anything like acceptable terms, the distinguished Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo, shows herself once more on entertaining and unreformed subversive.

Changes is her latest novel, and in it she indulges in a skilful play of irony and social satire brought off with irrepressible joyousness that will delight new readers and old friends alike.

Title: The Hundred Wells of Salaga
Author: Ayesha Harruna Attah
Publisher: Other Press
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 225

Synopsis: 

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that turns her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. Their lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Through the story of these remarkably strong women who challenged the expectations placed on them by society, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers an intimate, authentic look at what it was like to live and think in Africa before the colonial era. At once heartbreaking and inspiring, this novel is essential for those who loved Homegoing and Things Fall Apart.