‘Purple Mangoes’: stories about unusual women

Title: Purple Mangoes Author: Olunosen Louisa Ibhaze  Publisher: Bahati Books Reviewer: Nathaniel Bivan   Just below the title, ‘Purple Mangoes’, this book reveals it’s a collection of short stories about African women. So you wonder, why African women? But you will soon understand after a few pages. Of course it’s the woman that births the […]

Title: Purple Mangoes

This is why an African woman in Ibhaze’s stories writes a letter to the unborn child  she longs to welcome into this world. Outside the love she will shower this child is her desire to show him or her ‘the way’, even if it means with a whip. Many women may relate to this, but perhaps fewer will in this modern time. Nevertheless, this woman’s voice is that of the typical African woman. 

There’s simplicity in Ibhaze’s style and it resonates with the stories she tells. Like in ‘The Child Widow’ for example, a minor married to a teacher old enough to be her grandfather has to learn to be a woman. Then her husband dies and her in-law’s blame her. How does she defend herself?

But not every story is like the latter. Suspense has never ceased to be an ingredient of fiction, and this is what the author does with ‘He Promised’. When Paul returns home to spend their anniversary with his wife, and it all seems like a dream. And so it is throughout that day as he baths and pampers his wife. But something is wrong. Didn’t he travel just the day before? How did he make it back early in the morning? These are questions that keep a reader till the very end. 

Other stories in this collection are ‘Abiku’, ‘Baby Girl’, ‘Bed’, ‘Witch Child’, ‘He Had Fallen and Died’, and ‘Hospitality Business’.

Perhaps there should have been more intriguing story titles, but Ibhaze’s imagery pushes this aside with commedable imagery in stories like ‘Abiku’:

Amidst rising smoke and beating drums, the priestess staggered to the haunting beat. Her wrists and ankles richly adorned with cowries and brightly coloured beads. Her hair wrapped in a thickly knotted red cloth with another knotted tightly above her ample bosom as she continued to stumble in a drunken stupor. 

Why would a child be called a witch and become responsible for her family’s woes? These are issues this author treats in her stories, and they are certainly some of Africa’s burden. These things and more, happen, you may say, and Ibhaze makes it her assignment to remind us to look inward.