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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
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The Girl with the Louding Voice meets The Water Dancer in Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ's magical, award-winning literary debut, Dazzling, offering a new take on West African mythology.
Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure's father died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a man who promises to change their fortunes, but his feet are hovering just a few inches above the ground. He's a spirit, and he promises to bring Treasure's beloved father back to life if she'll do one terrible thing for him first.
Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back. It's an itch that speaks to her patrilineal destiny, an honor never before bestowed upon a girl, to defend the land and protect its people by becoming a Leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honor this was before he vanished, but it's one she couldn't want less—she has enough to worry about as she tries to fit in at a new boarding school.
But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their missing fathers, Ozoemena's fellow students start to vanish. Treasure's obligations to the spirit escalate, and Ozoemena's duty of protection as a Leopard grows. Soon the girls' destinies and choices alike set them on a dangerous collision course. Ultimately, they must ask themselves: in a world that always says no to women, what must two young girls sacrifice to get what is theirs?
Chapter Thirty-Six
Treasure: Then
The goat is doing "mkpaaa-mkpaaa" in the boot. Ever since we left it have been making noise, even though driver tight its leg and hand and opened the boot so that it can hang its head outside and be getting breeze. Goat is not cow; they are always making noise. There is go-slow all the way from Onitsha to Agulu upon it have not yet reached ten o'clock in the morning, and Mummy is fanning herself because Driver can only be putting on AC small-small so that battery will not die.
"I don't know why you had to get dibia from Agulu, are there no longer people in Onitsha, eh?" Mummy is asking Driver again upon she have already asked him plenty time and Driver is telling her that he knows the man because he is his brother from his mother's side, and his gift is pure from God; he is not a wayo man. This time as she is asking Driver is not saying anything again, only minding his driving business, because after all, is not as if Mummy is looking for answer, she just wants to bite somebody, because going to dibia house is paining her.
Is paining me too. Dibia said Mummy should bring goat, he did not call my name, why is Mummy forcing me to follow her and go as if me I did not see what I will be using my time for? I have to finish my revision. And this dibia man that put his hand inside my breast? Shame is catching me, I am just vexed completely. Am totally vexed and fed up, but nobody asked me my mind so I didin talk.
And too, who knows? The dibia man have strong medicine because I sleep well, baff well, no spirit coming excepting when he sent Ifeanyi message for example. If Mummy did not bring goat for him, who knows what the dibia will do? Is better that we do as he says so that the people we are owing will be lesser and lesser. As I am here now inside the car, there are whole two seeds inside my wardroom where I hide it, waiting for who will collect.
The go-slow is much, but Driver knows how to drive, how to put tyre inside small space until the body of the car enters finish. Sometimes he will cut hand, cut hand, Mummy will now use the China handfan she is using to be fanning herself to beat him as if he is a small boy, that he should stop dragging her new car; after all, he cannot buy it. Driver has full-stop his mouth. He is vexing.
As we are nearing Agulu, Driver is relaxing because it is his hometown, and talking small to himself. Mummy is fanning herself more-more.
"Treasure, we need to go in, give him his goat and get out fast. We don't want anybody to see us going to dibia before it will look as if we are fetish people. We are going up in the world," says Mummy. She puts on her sunshades. Driver starts to be singing and I know he heard what Mummy said. Next thing, we drive into the small road and Driver stops the car in front of one old, falling-down house and says he is coming, that has to go and collect number.
"Number for what?" Mummy is winding her window and shouting him.
"Everybody coming must pick number. Please Madam, I am coming." He enters the door of the falling-down house. It is quiet, as if main road is not in our back. Even the goat that was disturbing is now closing its mouth. Mummy fans her China fan fast.
"I need to do my hair today, this foolish man should not waste my time. If I sweat too much, relaxer will pepper me." She looks inside the steering wheel. "And he took the keys. Imagine!"
Driver comes out, holding one yellow paper. He enters car, gives the paper to Mummy. They wrote "52" on it with black marker. On the back in pen, they wrote "N20." Mummy opens her purse and counts the money, five-five naira and one ten naira, and gives him. He goes back inside, comes out, enters car again and starts it.
"He is not collecting the goat again?" asks Mummy.
"No, Ma. This is where we get ticket, not where we see him." I jus' said let me close my mouth and be looking. As we are driving, see Agulu Lake moving like cloth that someone is holding on one side and shaking. Driver corners again ...
Excerpted from Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu. Copyright © 2023 by Chikodili Emelumadu. Excerpted by permission of The Overlook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Adolescence is a time when social positioning takes on a certain weight, when exam grades and friend groups and popularity can begin to make a difference in a person's adult future. Chikodili Emelumadu's Dazzling paints a dramatic picture of this fraught period, specifically for girls in a society that undervalues them, through two teenagers coming of age in 1990s Nigeria: Ozoemena, who has inherited the ability to transform into a leopard from her deceased uncle Odiogo but has yet to make use of this gift, and Treasure, whose grief over her father's death leads her into a dangerous agreement with a spirit who appears to her in human form.
The main action flows around Ozoemena and her entry into a boarding school, where she deals with typical problems — bullies, academic pressure, the perils of not fitting in — along with unanswered questions about her destiny that are tied up with her leopard identity and the milestones she must pass if she is to assume it. The story is notably and refreshingly free of any lingering on her experience as either a persecuted or special figure. Yes, she is markedly different from her peers and must contend with responsibilities beyond her years, but Emelumadu seems more interested in showing how Ozoemena deals with the ethical and practical dilemmas that befall her than in creating a relatable depiction of teenage angst. Luckily, this doesn't keep the book from entertaining mightily in its rendering of classroom and schoolyard taunts between Ozoemena's friends and enemies. "If you talk to me like that I will Jackie Chan your whole face," says one girl. "Can't you take that gum out of your mouth, for god's sake?" says another. "You look like a masticating goat."
The alternating storyline belonging to Treasure, called Dazzling by her father, is similarly full of snark and vigor. While Ozoemena's chapters run on smoothly gliding third-person action and description, Treasure's are characterized by her charming and morally ambiguous first-person narration. When she agrees to procure "wives" for the spirit who promises to bring her father back to her in return, it is easy for the reader to continue sympathizing with her, because she is obviously in deep pain over her father's death and is suffering, along with her mother, from being female in a society that makes it difficult for women and girls to survive without the protection of a man. Besides, she's funny, and resourceful, and the people she does bad things to sometimes seem to almost deserve it.
It isn't clear until close to the end how the two storylines will intersect, or rather, have already intersected. In the meantime, they vacillate not only between perspective but also time. This format is handled impressively, sustaining interest and suspense despite the reader's lack of knowledge about what exactly is going on. Emelumadu achieves this in part through the episodic nature of the chapters, which read as an end in themselves, a feature that compensates somewhat for the book's ending, which feels abrupt and out of step with the emotional and ethical nuances of what comes before.
Despite this disappointment, Dazzling is memorable in its portrayal of the persistence of grief, and it excels in showing what is sacrificed when people become mired in the past. Treasure, embodying her names, exudes a vitality unappreciated by those around her even as she makes rash decisions that risk her future. Both characters are, in one way or another, moving towards or preoccupied with death, yet moment by moment, Emelumadu's novel is an honoring of life — not intellectually or explicitly, but simply in the way that good fiction creates a vivid sense of existence that makes the world a little brighter, if only for a short time.
Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook
Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne
Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring and A Single Thread
In Chikodili Emelumadu's Dazzling, Ozoemena inherits the ability to transform into a leopard from her uncle, a power that comes with certain obligations and responsibilities. Her father's side of the family belongs to a secret society that maintains this tradition, a plot detail inspired in part by real-life phenomena. In an interview with Brittle Paper, Emelumadu notes that leopards have played a significant part in Igbo culture as sacred figures (as well as in other cultures of West African regions), and that historical "leopard societies" believed that they could take on the powers of the leopard for the purpose of keeping order in their communities.
"Not quite extrajudicial but skirting on the cusp, it was their job to punish crimes through methods which in themselves were considered taboo," she explains. "Crimes against man but also against nature, such as rape, incest, adultery etc. It is worthy of note that both men and women were equally punished, which is one of the things that attracted me to the idea of them. It was balanced, not unfair." Emelumadu says these groups were also "fighting British influence" during colonial rule, referencing in particular a society in the eastern part of the country that was active throughout the colonial period — from the late 19th century through 1960. However, she declines to comment on the reality of what activities any group may have been involved in; much of the information and ideas publicly available on these societies has come from outsiders aligned with colonial influence and interests.
Historian Geoffrey I. Nwaka explains how various secret societies, and their associations with leopards, became a source of fear and confusion for colonial authorities in the 1940s, when a spate of mysterious killings initially believed to be the result of leopard attacks took place among the Annang and Ibibio people of eastern Nigeria. Between 1943 and 1948, more than 200 mutilated bodies were discovered. Leopards did pose a real threat in the region, but rumors began to circulate that a group of organized assassins, or Ekpe Owo ("leopard men"), were responsible. Secret groups in the area, including the traditional Ekpe ("leopard") society, who effectively acted as a police force outside of British authority, and the Idiong Ibok, who provided medicines to the local population in line with beliefs about humans being able to turn themselves into leopards, were considered to have possibly been involved. The investigation resulted in the eventual hanging of 77 suspects of "man-leopard murder" in what Nwaka calls "one of the most bizarre anti-crime campaigns of the colonial period." Nwaka theorizes that some of the killings may have been ordered by "Ekpe Owo," but that the vast majority were probably carried out by imitators attempting to escape punishment for their crimes by mimicking the supposed assassins' perceived methods, and that some were actually leopard attacks.
Dazzling mixes a modern, speculative interpretation of secret society history with feminism, suggesting that Ozoemena brings unique advantages to a role that was traditionally carried out by men. It is implied that through her leopard spirit, Ozoemena can sniff out injustice and attack wrongdoers, though her human self may not always be aware of the leopard's actions.
Leopard, via Pexels
Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities
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