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Showing posts from December, 2019

BOOK REVIEW: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

I first got introduced to this book via Twitter. A few people mentioned that they enjoyed reading it, so I thought why not. I had not read any reviews on the book and simply bought it because it seemed like a popular read on Twitter. About the book: This book is set in Nigeria where a “self-made” man, who can barely keep anything he eats down, lives with his 4 wives. The wives all have troubling pasts, growing up under poverty and hard labour. They marry Baba Segi as a means of escaping their hard lives. The book mainly revolves around the last and youngest wife Bolanle, who, unlike the other wives is educated! She is a graduate and this is often used to mock her. The wives immediately feel threatened by her arrival at the Segi household as they feel that she sees herself as better than them and walks with her “nose in the air”. However, educated as she is, she chooses to marry a polygamous man much to her mothers disapproval. While the other wives feel unsettled by her presence