Title: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
Author: Lola Shoneyin
Rating: 5
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The first time I read this book was for a Literature class in 200 Level. While I remember it being a very good book, I must have breezed through it because a lot of things about this book flew over my head, and I’m glad I reread it because I now see it in a clear and beautiful new light. This book has so much depth and beauty, and everyone definitely needs to read it. I buddyread it with @itan.ile on Instagram, and I really enjoyed the conversations we had about the book.
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Focusing on Baba Segi and his four wives – Iya Segi, Iya Tope, Iya Femi, and Bolanle, Lola Shoneyin takes us on a wild ride. Full of secrets, humor, malice, and sketchy pasts, there’s so much to love about this book. The writing style, the characterization, the themes discussed, and the psinted portrait of a Nigerian polygamous home are some of my favorite things about the book. Shoneyin explored a wide range of themes in this book, including but not limited to infertility and barrenness, polygamy, rape and sexual abuse, queerness, and bad parenting.
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In the Alao household, Baba Segi reigns supreme, and his first 3 wives are enjoying their little ecosystem before the arrival of Bolanle, the educated fourth wives. For reasons best known to them, they believe that Bolanle’s arrival will turn their existence in Baba Segi’s household upside down. There were so many instances of the wives doing mean-spirited and downright evil things to Bolanle in a bid to get her to leave their home. I love that the author did not just stop here with the first 3 wives. Apart from painting them as wicked senior wives, she rounded them out as women with pasts and their own secrets and histories. At the end, you can’t help but feel different feelings – both warm and cold – towards them, as opposed to just disliking them if Shoneyin hadn’t developed them fully.
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The author also explored different family settings in the book apart from Baba Segi’s family, through the past of the other wives. We see different parents and how their decisions and fates affected the futures of their daughters.
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This was a really great book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.
Blurb
African-born poet Lola Shoneyin makes her fiction debut with The Secret Lives of Babi Segi’s Wives, a perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria. The struggles, rivalries, intricate family politics, and the interplay of personalities and relationships within the complex private world of a polygamous union come to life in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives—Big Love and The 19th Wife set against a contemporary African background.
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