Scribner UK • Release Date: April 2024

We Were Girls Once, the sophomore by Aiwanose Odafen, successfully demonstrates what the Igbo means when they argue that the past ripples with a force that tethers one to its roots, propulsion possible only when one can bravely look back. Split into three sections, the narrative weaves in and out of the lives of three friends—Ego, Zina, and Eriife, whose friendship began way before their time, in the 1940s, with their grandmothers. Fans of Odafen’s debut, Tomorrow I Become a Woman, will be delighted to know that this novel is a sequel to that stunning outing.

Here we meet Ego, who journeys to the United Kingdom to earn a degree and despite having a bit of success working in a law firm, constantly reflects on what hulks behind her: her father’s violence, her mother’s endurance, the physical abuse she herself endured—first at the hands of her father after she stood up for her mother, and later at the hands of a preacher, who her partner trusted. Abuse sits too close to home, abuse stunts, and this brilliant woman who should have spent the rest of her years basking in the fruits of her labor, is held captive: she is unable to move forward, unable to untangle herself from the horrors of her past. To find a sort of healing, she must come home, physically and psychologically closing the distance between the self and the source of trauma, and it is only after she has done this that we begin to find a sort of propulsion in her story, even if that forward movement is fraught with the terror that is contemporary Nigeria. Zina is also held in the grip of that past, mostly in her tense relationship with her mother. She is also successful in her field, a famous actress whose face stirs equal measures of envy and adoration. But the glorious thing about Zina is her loyalty to Ego: she is there when Ego finally and publicly confronts an old terror. She, too, begins to mend her relationship with her mother, and at the end, the reader is comforted by the tender ways Odafen explored this theme of female friendship. In the last section, we meet Eriife, who had veered into a path her friends, especially Zina, found problematic: politics. Eriife is bullheaded. What she lost in her earlier quest for motherhood, she makes up by ruthlessly amassing power, wealth, and influence for herself. And when she has risen above old hurts, despite the material cost on the population, Nigeria deals her a blow that rocks her to the roots. And unsurprisingly, her friends arrive to hold her hand.

Love and healing sit at the heart of this polyphonic novel. Odafen’s language is sharp, unadorned, and unforgiving. She wants us to look, to feel; she wants us to reflect on not just our collective past but also the horror of our present. We Were Girls Once demands a conversation about how we collectively have been hurt and the ways in which we hurt others, because propulsion genuinely happens after we have had an honest and uncomfortable conversation about how far we have come. And it takes the deft mind of an attentive writer to stir this kind of somber reflection.

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About the Reviewer:

Ukamaka Olisakwe is the author of Ogadinma and Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name.