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A review by namakurhea
La bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
5.0
I was surprised to see Goodreads rating this book 3.6 because yo, THIS IS A FIVE STARS READ FOR ME. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book is one of many examples why you should never judge a book by its GR rating.
In only 88 pages, this book discusses so much! At surface level it’s basically a coming-of-age story as our main character, Okomo, tries to define herself in a community that is suffocatingly patriarchal and heteronormative. I’m putting the brief summary at the slide above so that I can proceed to mention everything I love about this work.
I decided to read this book not just from a literary lense. I learned my lesson from when I was reading “Women Dreaming” by Salma where I was very sharp in my review...when in fact I was limitting myself to judging the work from literary lense. So when reading “La Bastarda”, I keep in mind that this is the first novel by a female author from Equatorial Guinea (a country with 1.5 mio population and the only country in the continent where Spanish is the official language). This book is banned in Equatorial Guinea and as per info from @transitsanta, it is no longer in print. This book is also published by @feministpress . All the aforementioned things made me think that “Hey perhaps Trifonia Melibea Obono wrote this book as a stand; a statement.” NOT to get high GR ratings. NOT to please someone looking for character development. But to portray a character’s journey to self-determination in a society that so close to a heteronormative script.
I love the afterword by Abosede George in which she also talks about how LGBT rights activists were often accused of being “Un-African”. “La Bastarda” counteracts this argument because eventually Okomo and her friends found solace deeper within the jungles of Equatorial Guinea (in contrast with going to a more liberal metropolis like in Western societies).
In only 88 pages, this book discusses so much! At surface level it’s basically a coming-of-age story as our main character, Okomo, tries to define herself in a community that is suffocatingly patriarchal and heteronormative. I’m putting the brief summary at the slide above so that I can proceed to mention everything I love about this work.
I decided to read this book not just from a literary lense. I learned my lesson from when I was reading “Women Dreaming” by Salma where I was very sharp in my review...when in fact I was limitting myself to judging the work from literary lense. So when reading “La Bastarda”, I keep in mind that this is the first novel by a female author from Equatorial Guinea (a country with 1.5 mio population and the only country in the continent where Spanish is the official language). This book is banned in Equatorial Guinea and as per info from @transitsanta, it is no longer in print. This book is also published by @feministpress . All the aforementioned things made me think that “Hey perhaps Trifonia Melibea Obono wrote this book as a stand; a statement.” NOT to get high GR ratings. NOT to please someone looking for character development. But to portray a character’s journey to self-determination in a society that so close to a heteronormative script.
I love the afterword by Abosede George in which she also talks about how LGBT rights activists were often accused of being “Un-African”. “La Bastarda” counteracts this argument because eventually Okomo and her friends found solace deeper within the jungles of Equatorial Guinea (in contrast with going to a more liberal metropolis like in Western societies).