Reviews with content warning for War - Jumătate de soare galben

Olanna, the partner
- Nkem, my own. 🫶🏻
- Page 37 — “None of them thanked Maxwell. Olanna wished they would; it was such a simple thing to do, to acknowledge the humanity of the people who served them.”
- Page 65 — “Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it to a prosaic partnership.”

Richard + Kainene
- I <3 them.
- Page 100 — Major Madu Madu: “‘Well, the British have just decided to control immigration from the Commonwealth, haven’t they? They want people to stay in their own countries. The irony, of course, is that we in the Commonwealth can’t control the British moving to our countries.
- Page 101 — Major Udodi: “‘The white man will poke and poke and poke the women in the dark but they will never marry them. How can! They will never even take them out to a good place in public. But the women will continue to disgrace themselves and struggle for the men so they will get chicken-feed money and nonsense tea in a fancy tin. It’s a new slavery, I’m telling you, a new slavery. But you are a Big Man’s daughter, so what you are doing with him?’”

Page 128 — Olanna: “For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need the choicelessness she often felt around him.” After the crazy MIL moment with Odenigbo

Page 143 — Richard: “He shouldn’t have been so ill-tempered with the poor man; it wasn’t Harrison’s fault that Okeoma felt he was condescending. It the look in Okeoma’s eyes that worried him the most: a disdainful distrust that made him think of a reading somewhere that the African and the European would always be irreconcilable. It was wrong of Okeoma to assume that he was one those Englishmen who did not give the African the benefit of an equal intelligence. Perhaps he had sounded surprised, now that he thought of it, but it was the same surprise he would express if a similar discovery were made in England or anywhere else in the world.”

Part II: Late 1960s, Biafra —
- The scene at the airport with Nnaemeka + Richard. The second coup. 😭💔
- Page 205 — Biafran flag: “half of a yellow sun”
- Page 209 — Richard: “If this is hatred, then it is very young. It has been caused, simply, by the informal divide-and-rule policies of the British colonial exercise. These policies manipulated the differences between the tribes and ensured that unity would not exist, thereby making the easy governance of such a large country practicable.”
  - The foreign papers have it completely wrong.

Page 238: Olanna receives a letter from Mohammed and Odenigbo calls him a traitor, like all the others from the North (Nigeria, at this point). *not all Northerns are alike + Mohammed helped Olanna escape during the second coup yet he still has such hate for him

Part III: early 1960s —
- Page 273 — Olanna: “Olanna felt a sudden pity for him, for her mother, for herself and Kainene. She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.” I feel that so much. So true.
  - Odenigbo also cheating. 😡
- Page 290 — Olanna: “‘Nobody dropped you into anything.” Amala is pregnant with Odenigbo’s child. The RAGE. 😡 Odenigbo saying his mother manipulated him, she’s dropped him into her plot, which she did, but really it was him. He had to make the choice, even drunk.
- Page 290 — Edna, the neighbour to Olanna: “‘Look at you. You’re the kindest person I know. Look how beautiful you are. Why do you need so much outside of yourself? Why isn’t what you are enough? You’re so damned weak.’” Truth hurts — also, she sleeps with Richard. 😳
- Page 306 — Olanna: “Or she should have told him more: that she regretted betraying Kainene and him but did not regret the act itself. She should have said that it was not a crude revenge, or a scorekeeping, but took on a redemptive significance for her. She should have said the selfishness had liberated her.” I’m not a believer in cheating in any form but it makes sense.
- Page 319 — Kainene: “‘You’re the good one and the favourite and the beauty and the Africanist revolutionary who doesn’t like white men, and you simply did not need to fuck him. So why did you?’” I just really liked this.
- Kainene burns Richard’s manuscript. RIP

Part IV: the late 1960s
- The egg yolk story. Lead with kindness. Baby survives. ♥️
- Ugwu is so helpful + kind; when Olanna insults him by saying his bush village doesn’t matter, that hurt.
  - Page 359: “I said your hometown is too small! They will not be interested in staying there. There is nothing there to stay for, you see. It is just a small bush.” The fear and stress are really getting to her. The bombings. Starvation. Poor Ugwu takes the hit all the time.
- Page 435 — Kainene: “There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.” I’m so happy Olanna + Kainene have buried the hatchet. They really need each other. Also on that page, it did not kill me — it made me knowledgeable. ♥️

Page 499 — Kainene: “There were tears running down her face. There was something magnificent in her rage. Ugwu felt stained and unworthy as he went about his new duties after the priests left — distributing garri, breaking up fights, supervising the scorched and failing farms. He wondered what Kainene would say, what she would do to him, feel about him, if she ever knew about the girl in the bar. She would loathe him. So would Olanna. So would Eberechi.”
- Conversation on the corruptive nature of missionary work
- Dialogue about abuse of power
- Ugwu — he’s coming from a vulnerable position in life, with no power; but when placed in a military position, he gains power and is more susceptible to the abuse of power.
- Also a conversation about gender + and male dominance, in both situations — the powerful taking advantage of the weak or the vulnerable

Page 541 — Ugwu writes his dedication last: For Master, my good man. 😭

One of the best books I’ve ever read.

Content Warnings

north_willow's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

getyourghosts's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

archie_dermott's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

boodschappenlijst's review against another edition

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dark sad tense

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

What can I say? Firsthand narratives of war aren't new to me, and yet this book managed to be so harrowing. The hopelessness of the situation settled deep into me while reading, as if I was experiencing the war right along with the protagonists. The first part of the book paints such a hopeful narrative, only for it to turn around into years of dread and terror. And somehow, the most striking thing of all is how people must have been so bored, to wait around for three years for aid and a ceasefire to come.

Admittedly, the sex scenes at the beginning felt a bit gratuitous. I do still wonder whether all of them were necessary. At some point it felt like the author playing up to the trope of conventional white-man literature being full of unnecessary sex. But in the latter half I understood how those scenes were meant to contrast with a situation in which nothing was normal. In which the simple act of laying with each other was a rebellion against the constant fear for life. When nothing is as normal, mundane acts become revolutionary in a sense.

The ending of the book, revealing

Ugwu as the writer of the book all along, was wonderfully satisfying. I dreaded the white man writing about an African war and centering his own narrative. Ugwu stepping up to become the author almost has a meta-textual meaning:

We, from the Global South, from disenfranchised communities, should be telling our stories ourselves. Half of a Yellow Sun is itself a marvelous example of that.

Content Warnings

lisaharrison's review against another edition

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I could not connect with the characters; they were not well-developed people and did not feel authentic. Much of the novel focused on graphic sexual scenes that felt gratuitous. The women characters were constantly objectified.

Content Warnings

bschuze's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

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