Introduction
When we launched Isele Magazine in July 2020, one of our goals was to publish works that hold the mirror to society, works that are defiant, works that challenge the conventional ways of being. We did this with our inaugural publications and our first themed quarterly, the Woman Issue, and have continued to do so over the years. And it was thrilling when the Nigerian poet and activist, Angel Nduka-Nwosu, reached out to us, seeking to collaborate on an anthology of poems by 28 Nigerian women, titled The Woman is no Messiah, in which they document their laughter, joy, pleasure, grief, and more.
The poems in this anthology insist on centering the woman and pushing back against society’s belief that a “good woman” is the one who puts everyone else’s needs first before hers. Nduka-Nwosu expands on the importance of this centering in her introductory note, writing that the “poems speak to our collective desire to be seen as human and to evolve from a point of endless sacrifice to a sisterhood defined by shared dreams.”
Some of the poets here have previously contributed to Isele Magazine, including Roseline Mgbodichinma and Adeyele Adeniran, who were both longlisted for the inaugural Isele Prizes. Mgbodichinma later made the shortlist for the inaugural Isele Short Story Prize for her short story, “Souvenir.” It is such a joy to meet other poets spread across Nigeria and beyond, from university students to established artists and activists, who are passionate about the everyday realities of the woman in a country that coddles badly-behaved men; a country where womanhood is synonymous with suffering; where daughters, wives, mothers, and partners are burdened with the responsibility of shouldering the man’s inadequacies, becoming essentially his messiah, even though she is continually reduced to a fixture in his story.
And so, we are glad to share this resistive anthology with you. We invite you to dance and sing with these women. We invite you to spread their songs, to pause and contemplate with them. As Nduka-Nwosu writes, our hope is that everyone reading the poems will agree with us that “truly, messiahship must have no place in Nigerian womanhood.”
Ukamaka Olisakwe Editor in Chief, Isele Magazine
Follow the link below to read and download the anthology for free:
Isele Magazine 