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The writer Lola
Shoneyin lives life joyously on her own terms, tastefully wearing her
smarts and sensuality in a world bound in rigid emotional ropes of
hypocrisy. Her poetry is scrumptious, turning cold rocks into sniveling
lovers. She wields words like fierce weapons against the past tense
posing for tradition. This thinker of Nigerian extraction is ahead of
her time in promulgating innovative ideas and in the way she deploys
her myriad energies to the arduous task of jump-starting courageous
conversations in a complex society like Nigeria.

Cassava Republic
has just released Shoneyin’s novel, ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s
Wives’. I adore this book. From start to finish, it is a triumph of
life over adversity, a joyful ode to the sensual mystery and resilience
of the human spirit. I love this book. Shoneyin brings together her
unique poetic senses and her love of the human story and wraps up a
great tale with muscular prose. Politely defiant Shoneyin bends every
cultural artefact and taboo in her brainy sensual path. This is a soap
opera between the covers. I love the author’s bold use of language and
imagery. She teases, she taunts, she soothes with her words. This is a
rebel gleefully tugging at silly clay boundaries. Every other page
hides sentences that desire to stir your consciousness – and your
loins. Nothing is taboo for Shoneyin; she is eclectic in a brilliant
near-reckless manner. Her words are defiant, and drunk with the sweet
musky smell of primal sex. Sexual tension keeps the pages erect and
thirsty for lusty sex. And the curses and trash talking rain down
freely, Nigerian style. You might as well be riding around in a
bolekaja enjoying Nigerian life at its most impish.

In ‘The Secret
Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’, Bolanle, a university graduate joins Baba
Segi’s household as the fourth wife. Using this canvas, the author
inspects Nigeria’s motley issues, as if from a dirty window. It is
pretty, ugly, and riotous and secrets do not stay hidden for too long.
Nigeria is a market and everything is sold in the open. In the process,
we are entertained. Shoneyin taps furiously and insistently on social
issues, prying their doors open for the reader to confront. Issues like
marital abuse, rape, sexuality, infidelity, the relentless march and
meanness of the new Christianity, the ravages of a soulless consumer
society and the resulting mimicry of the other as in women bleaching
their skins to look attractive. There is an abundance of misogyny, and
patriarchy reigns supreme. Sons are a premium over daughters and well
sought after and celebrated by the society. Baba Segi is a loving
father, if a bit of a buffoon and a crude lover. He is an unattractive
man who has a disgusting habit of losing his bodily fluids when he is
stressed. But he is a good provider and the women humour him, to a
point. Women and children cope by manipulating men – with mixed and
unintended results.

Shoneyin addresses
the mystery and complexity of relationships and sexuality from a
woman’s perspective. Not many would agree with her sympathetic, almost
defiant take on the issue but she does give a powerful voice to those
whose crime is to be different from the tyrannical majority. In that
respect, compassion gushes from her pen. In the crush of issues like
arranged marriages and the expectation that women and children are
chattels beholden to men, there is a lesson here: women dream also of
the same pleasures and desires that men take sometimes violently.

The book gains confidence and traction with the turning of each
page. However, it was hard following the chapters as the points of view
changed. It stretches credulity to imagine Bolanle the fourth wife as a
university graduate married to a semi-illiterate polygamist. She does
not present herself as learned. The wives’ characters could have been
fleshed out a bit more robustly. In a few instances, the dialogue was
awkward. My worst line: “Well, you know before you wrap leaves around
liquidised beans one must ensure that the ingredients are complete.”
(p221) It is the worst translation of a proverb I have ever read. The
book is partly a conversation about paternalism and misogyny but it
comes across as hostile to men. Baba Segi is depicted as a hapless
buffoon who loses his bodily functions under stress. Men are typically
depicted as bumbling idiots with balls for brains and the book
gleefully lobs insults: “Men are nothing. They are fools. The penis
between their legs is all they are useful for. And even then, if not
that women needed their seed for children, it would be better to sit on
a finger of green plantain…” Regardless, the book will keep a reader
thinking for a long time. Not many would agree with the too-tidy
ending, life is too complex for that. But who cares? I love this book.