[It is a diptych: the photo is quite dark, the only brightness two purple hibiscuses with a pale and graceful hand reaching from outside the frame towards the blooms.]
- Why did I pick this book up?
I was gifted this book for Christmas in 2012. I tried to read it when it was given to me, but I happened to be battling severe depression at the time, and reading was really not at the top of my list of hobbies or things I could focus on. I remembered loving the first 20 pages that I had managed to read, so when the time came for me to pick something from my shelf to review, I was drawn to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.
Although it has taken me seven years to pick it up, it wound up only taking me three days to read, as I found myself deeply engrossed as soon as I finished the first chapter.
- Would I recommend why/why not?
If the incredibly high score I gave this book did not tip you off, let me be explicit: I fucking loved this book. It was almost perfect. It didn’t make me cry, but it almost did, and could definitely make someone cry, which I find a good sign of a book!
The prose is beautiful, lush, and poetic, and Adichie writes her text without making excuses or accommodations for her white, Western readers: Purple Hibiscus is full of Igbo words for food, greetings, and curses, and they are very rarely explained. Instead, Adichie writes for people who know what fufu is, or trusts that your interest in the book will spur an interest in finding out what these things are. I loved this! I felt very privileged to read a narrative that was so estranging, and yet warm and comforting to me. The unknown was not scary in Purple Hibiscus, and it was amazing to learn more about the politics and history of Nigeria.
So, read this book if you want to read, or like reading, African literature. Also read this book if you like coming of age stories, or women’s literature. *Trigger warning:* there is a dominant theme of an abusive father/spouse in the text.
[There is a book in front of a cool plant with spotted leaves. The book is a black and white photo of the bottom half of a girl’s face and a hibiscus flower.]
- Quick Synopsis **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:
The text jumps a bit in time, so I will just give some broad strokes. Kambili, our protagonist, is a teenage girl who lives with her brother Jaja and their parents in Nigeria. Their father is incredibly religious, incredibly wealthy, insanely abusive to his family, and insanely generous to his community and country.
Kambili lives in fear of her father, but also craves his approval and love – as any daughter would. Purple Hibiscus takes place when the carefully controlled lives that the family leads begin to unravel; Kambili and Jaja go spend some time with their Aunty Ifeoma and her children. There, they are faced with a world totally alien to theirs; it is a world where they are free to be themselves, where they must face the realities of economic uncertainty, and where they must finally admit that their family life is not only not perfect, it is oppressive, dangerous, and potentially fatal.
Of course, when they return home, their new experiences and perspectives send shock waves through their entire family, and rebellion fractures their family in a parallel to the fracturing of Nigeria through a military coup.
- Overall brain gushings :
I’ve actually done a rather short synopsis of the book, because there are a lot of really amazing twists and turns that I don’t want to ruin! The brutality with which Kambili’s father treats his wife is heart-wrenching and terrifying, and too numerous to highlight, but eventually she finds the courage to stand up for herself in an equally terrifying way! Seriously, this book was amazing until the last page, and proved me wrong for being upset that no one was actually standing up to such a violent and abusive man.
This book was also so beautifully written: even the way in which Adichie writes about violence is full of poetry and emotion, and I found myself actively carving out time to read in my daily schedule to savour this book.
It was amazing to read a story about a girl struggling to find her identity in a world dominated by religion and cataclysmic geo-political events.
- What does it mean?
Adichie uses the purple hibiscus as a symbol throughout the novel for growth and the freedom to just be: as Kambili becomes more sure of herself and her desires, these experimental and beautiful flowers reach for the sun and bloom.
This journey towards personal freedom is paralleled by Nigeria’s own journey towards freedom, marred by dictatorships and violence, much like Kambili’s life, yet moving steadily forward, with hope, towards potential self-actualization.
Purple Hibiscus is also concerned with the clash between traditional, “pagan” religion, and Christianity, highlighting the ways in which religion was used to subjugate and divide people while furthering the colonial agenda. Unlike the gay agenda, this agenda is marked by colourlessness, and is boring and sad.
The novel shows us the complexity of people – there is no black or white, good or evil. Purple Hibiscus allows for everyone to embody contradictions, to be many things at once. Adichie wants readers to see how religion and wealth do not seal against hypocrisy.
I could go on for a long time about everything in this book, but I don’t get paid to do this/am no longer paying to write essays on literature for academic credit, so this will do. Plus I still want you to go read this book yourself! If you have read it and want to discuss more, comment away and I’d be so pumped to discuss any aspect of this text!
- Favourite passages :
This passage is one of the first times we encounter how difficult and confusing it is to be hurt by someone you love, and how abusers manage to have such a hold on their victims. It also showcases Adichie’s incredible writing.
Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved. Have a love sip, he would say, and Jaja would go first. Then I would hold the cup with both hands and raise it to my lips. One sip. The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery, my raw tongue suffered. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, pg 8
The first time I heard Aunty Ifeoma call Mama ‘nwunye m,‘ years ago, I was aghast that a woman called another woman ‘my wife.’ When I asked, Papa said it was the remnants of ungodly traditions, the idea that it was the family and not the man alone that married a wife, and later Mama whispered, although we were alone in my room, ‘I am her wife, too, because I am your father’s wife. It shows that she accepts me.’
Adichie, pg 73
This is the first time readers “see” the image of the purple hibiscus, which comes to symbolize Kambili’s coming of age.
Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.
Adichie, pg 16
- If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :
If you have read Purple Hibiscus and want something similar to it – or if you just want other similar recommendations – I cannot sing the praises of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of the Four Wives which sometimes is found under the title The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Similarly to Adichie’s text, this novel is written by a Nigerian woman, is a story of intense family dynamics, examines a totally different religious aspect of Nigeria than Christianity, and has an amazing plot twist!
Another amazing book – this one a memoir – that highlights the difficulties of growing up with an abusive parent is Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes.
Stay tuned for my next review, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, which is described as a dramatic, operatic tale of hostage-taking and the complex dynamics between prisoner and jailor. I need to catch up on my reading, so hoping to speed-read, but also this review may take a couple extra days.
It's Lit Fam! 