Now here’s an African voice that I’d like to read more often! A voice so clear, so confident, so alluring. Daniel Hanson Dzah, when’s your debut novel coming??
Akosua’s Rage is perfect as we are in the thick of Women’s Month in South Africa – a tale of a strong woman, a woman who is not ashamed of her confidence, who does things, who fills her space in the world, who doesn’t shy away from doing exactly what it is that she needs to do.
Akosua has been married to Kweku for quite some time but they do not yet have any children. Kweku grows anxious and worried and decides to call a fetish priest who will help Akosua with her seeming fertility ‘problems’. Things take a turn into the ridiculous and Akosua disappears into their hut, returning with her husband’s hunting gun, ready to shoot the hen which predicted that she would bear seventeen children in total. The priest does something he’s never pulled off before – making the hen regurgitate the grains that predicted the seventeen children.
There Akosua stands, gun in hand, with her husband, the priest and a hen held hostage. Tired of being the object, tired of being spoken about, spoken for. Tired of all that it means to be a submissive woman. She takes a stand, she takes a gun and she creates a mini-world where she’s in charge, where she gets to choose just how many children she’d like to bear.
And she has to be strong for her husband too. Allay his fears. Soothe his restless mind.
Her rage is the rage of every woman. A reminder to keep fighting the good fight in all the places and spaces where we can.
Link to the story here
-Babongile Z
1001 Bookish Things 