![]() ![]() When Afi comes of age in their small town of Ho, Aunty delivers a proposal too attractive to refuse: Afi should marry her son Eli, who is entangled with a Liberian woman the family deeply dislikes. That is, until their local benefactor, Aunty Faustina Ganyo (“Aunty” for short), puts them up in one of her houses, and even gives Afi’s mother a job at her flour distribution depot. Having no claim to either their house or anything inside of it, they find themselves at the mercy of a tyrannical uncle, moving into the house of his three wives and 11 children. The book asks a fundamental question that women are asked, and must ask themselves all over the world, but in a decidedly West African context: How can you take care of your family and community obligations, and at the same time take care of yourself?įor Afi Tekple, the naive young protagonist thrust into a ridiculously untenable situation, the answer becomes clearer the more she finds her voice and courageously honors it.Īfi and her mother have been thrust into near-poverty after her father’s untimely death. ![]() ![]() ![]() “His Only Wife,” Peace Adzo Medie’s debut novel, is a deeply engrossing chronicle of contemporary Ghanaian womanhood: its challenges, opportunities and, perhaps most strikingly for Western audiences, its absurdity. ![]()
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