I really appreciated the subtle ways Chinelo Okparanta provided context for what was going on in Nigeria throughout the book, from civil war to the way certain acts of legislation impacted the characters.

But I enjoyed it, and it made me really think and reflect about the experience queer people still face in a country like Nigeria where same-sex relationships are criminalized. I can’t remember how I first heard of Under the Udala Trees, but I have been interested in it for a long time, and have only now taken the plunge to read it, as it is a bit outside my comfort zone. This story offers a glimmer of hope - a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.Īs Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti’s political coming of age, Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees uses one woman’s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood.

When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. They are from different ethnic communities. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.

Under the udala trees review