Black Sunday
Black Sunday (2020) by Tola Rotimi Abraham A fierce and fresh debut novel, set over the course of two decades in Nigeria, about sisterhood, fate and female resistance Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife and their father gambles away their home, and the siblings are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins’ paths diverge once the household shatters: one embracing modernity as the years pass, the other consumed by religion. Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Black Sunday delves into the chaotic heart of family life. In the process, it tells a tale of grace in the midst of daily oppression, and of how two women carve their own distinct paths of resistance.
Quotes
edit- It's a laugh I know, one most women I know have. Mother has it, too. Laughter you use when nothing is funny, but you are lighthearted and resilient and eager to show it.
- We did not yet have the kind of familiarity with misfortune that cultivated a sense of foreboding
- Just give me five years, I'll ruin his entire life
- I think families who spend a lot of time arguing about the small stuff do it because they do not have the courage to talk about the big things.
- All women are owned by someone, some are owned by many; a beautiful girl's only advantage is that she may get to choose her owner
- I was sick with longing. I was sick with the curse of sensation, with all the world's sadness seeking and finding a resting place in my bones and in my marrow.
- Lagos is filled with broke men with big dreams
- sister and I were almost stupid girls once”
- Page 4
- Here, take this microphone. Announce to all the world that we are two girls who don’t know the way home”
- Page 5
- sick with longing”
- Page 152
- “I think everything is a story unless you live in it. I like the idea of a god who knows what it’s like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone. To be happy you are different from your twin but also to be sad about it. To know almost everything about your twin and sometimes want to stop knowing so much. To know you were born with everything you will ever need for love but to be afraid that this one person is too important. Or that this person will never be enough. To pray to a god like that, all I would ever have to say is help me.”
- (Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 9)