I touch my face and my hand is damp. That’s unexpected. This dark tale of a family curse has more substance than I presumed.
For October (with it being both Black History Month and spooky season), I wanted to find a disturbing new release from a black writer, which is when I stumbled across Cursed Daughters. Oyinkan Braithwaite has a unique voice, one which I found interesting in her first novel My Sister, The Serial Killer. Her new novel has a similar tone. With both books capturing a sense of creeping discomfort, whilst also balancing complex and heartfelt topics.
Braithwaite packs a punch, without you even realising you’ve been smacked in the face, until you see the red mark left behind.
In Cursed Daughters, Braithwaite explores an array of ambitious ideas surrounding superstition, family tradition, Nigerian tribalism, first love, and even abortion. The narrative follows a family curse throughout the generations, which destroys the romantic relationships of the women in the family, all the way through to one of our key characters, Eniiyi – whose family believe her to be her dead aunt Monife reincarnated. So, lots going on here, clearly.
As a sucker for an unreliable narrator, I often enjoy when writers offer us different versions of the truth and make us consider what is the genuine reality within the world they show us. For clarity, this is a third person narrative, so is unlike something on the lines of Enduring Love or The Great Gatsby, but Braithwaite does make us question how much of this family curse is real and how much is pure fancy. Are these characters destroying their own relationships or is it the work of the curse? How many of their decisions are free will and how much is predestined? Are they all just buying into self-confirmation bias and superstition?
The family curse is a powerful metaphor for the carnage created by intergenerational trauma. With Eniiyi being a doppelganger for her aunt Monife, the pain passed onto others we love is at the heart of the novel; Monife died in tragic circumstances, with many other characters partially to blame, and so Eniiyi cannot detach herself from the grief their family history carries. Unwillingly, Eniiyi is forced into a role she does not deserve, as everyone she meets sees Monife, rather than Eniiyi, when they look at her.
In fact, the novel is soaked in metaphors which capture how this grief can burden a family. The motif of water recurs to great impact, highlighting how we can drown in our own trauma and the trauma of others. Similarly, the image of a wounded, dying lizard represents the loss of self and happiness. It is a sign of foreboding here. In Igbo culture, the lizard can represent self-respect and, in Yoruba culture, the lizard can represent prosperity – thus, as the lizard dies, so does the last hope for Monife.
This tale will crawl its way into your heart and curl up to die, leaving you with a weight inside. It’s not one for the fainthearted – and it’s not one to miss.
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