A real man doesn’t slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he’s got any self respect, much less hurt his own woman. A real man busts his ass to feed his family…and he treats his wife with respect every day of his life ¯ S.M. Stirling
In 2016, Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters who walk this path was longlisted for the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Literature Prize. The book, which was published in Canada to rave reviews, was published in Nigeria two years later. It entered the Nigerian literary firmament like a thief in the night because I cannot recall ever reading about its publication by its publishers, Kachifo Limited under its Farafina imprints.
Months after buying the book and loading it among my growing Tsundoku, my daughter sighted it and read it all night. She then appealed to me to drop whatever book I was reading and embark on Daughters immediately. I could not ignore her because her reading taste is mature and sophisticated. She is my sounding board in reading any unread book on my shelf. I abandoned all other readings and obeyed her. She was not wrong. I read it and was not surprised when it was later longlisted in the 2016 for the NLNG prestigious zrize.
It competed with other strong books and did not win the prize. That doesn’t, however, take the fact away that Kilanko is a compulsive writer. She writes with a strong and subtle panache that makes her voice to be distinct in your memory long after you’ve finished reading her book.
Recently, she was on a brief visit home from her base in Canada. The visit was to impart some creative writing knowledge in some young and new voices. Also on that trip, she had a reading from her new book, a novella entitled Chasing Butterflies, published by Quramo Publishing.
Domestic violence is on the rise worldwide and attention is being focussed on it to find a lasting solution to it. Just last week, the story was in almost all Nigerian newspapers of a wife who butchered her husband to death with a knife over suspicion that he was dating another woman. The scourge of domestic violence is not restricted to Nigeria; it has become a worldwide plague. Australia recently passed a law that gives victims of domestic violence a ten-day paid leave from work. Even as the society is frowning at it and enacting laws to curb it, yet it persists.
This is the thorny issue Kilanko has turned her searchlight on in her new book. It is the story of Tomide and Titilope, a Nigerian couple living in the United States of America. The relationship is not on a sound footing and the wife (Titilope) makes a strong effort to cover up the rocky relationship even from their best friends, another Nigerian couple. However, every effort on her part to ensure the crack doesn’t get noticed was futile.
This did not in any way help her because she was suffering in silence. This was not only to protect her marriage, but also to save her from the uncontrollable wrath and spousal abuse of her rather unruly and tyrannical husband (Tomide). The situation at a point became so unbearable that it was going to either consume her if she didn’t get anyone to rescue her from this lifelong misery of a marriage. She got a breather and a saviour from a very unlikely and least expected quarter!
This new novella may not be as rich in characters and diverse as her first book, but this, no doubt, is a very engaging and nuanced book. Just like Daughters who walk this path, her new offering Chasing Butterflies, is a spell-binding and good read for those who perhaps have a phobia for reading big books. It is a book one can read in a day or less, especially given the fact that it is well written in flowing simple language. A reader would not be able to put it down because one would be eager to know what happens next.
Kilanko is an enchanting raconteur; she writes in a simple but elegant way. She surely has her feet firmly planted on the path to our collective future and memory.