The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

This book had all my favourite topics bundled into a huge treasure box of words. Kirabo is raised by her grandparents in Uganda's Nattetta. She's on a constant quest to find her mother while her father works in the city. But that's not all. The book covers a range of areas from Kirabo when she's a girl to the time she turns into a woman.

One of the most powerful expressions the book explores is how women are the biggest gatekeepers of other women's ambitions because they were all raised to revere and uphold patriarchal values themselves. Women prevent other women from growing, from breaking free from the clutches of patriarchy. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi talks about jealous friendships, strict school experiences, stricter home surroundings, cheating husbands and wives who accept that, husbands who don't accept wives who already have children from a different relationship, schools that throw pregnant girls out, political leaders like Idi Amin whose decisions play a strong role in how women saw themselves, and most of all, marriages in which women owned nothing—not even their own bodies, or their own children.

Makumbi does all this deftly while describing experiences and letting us soak in the patriarchal values and culture of Uganda. I learnt about mwenkanonkano, the Ugandan feminist movement (which was in existence way before any of the western or white feminist movements came into effect) and a lot of Luganda words too. The best part about Makumbi's writing is that she doesn't offer meanings, explanations or footnotes for the Luganda words in the book. Like she says "I don't write for a Western audience. If I can understand Shakespeare, you can understand me."

"I don't write for a Western audience. If I can understand Shakespeare, you can understand me." — Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

As a writer, I've taken this valuable lesson from her in the last couple of years and incorporated it everywhere. Reading this book is an experience. I cried in parts. It made me angry, and it also helped me examine my own limitations as a woman in this world. It made me feel less alone. Please read this book, and every other book she has written.

Pasting a few powerful quotes from the book:

‘A girl uneducated is an oppressed wife in the making.’

"Father then told me I now belonged to Miiro and his family, including my dead body when I die. That was when I remembered the real truth about marriage and cried. All the worry about not marrying, then the beautiful rituals can mask the truth and you forget that you are crossing into another clan, into another world and you don’t own yourself."

‘Water has no shape, it can be this, it can be that, depending on where it flows. The sea is inconstant, it cannot be tamed, it does not yield to human cultivation, it cannot be owned; you cannot draw borders on the ocean. To the ancients, women belonged with the sea like in marriage.’

'Girls had reduced themselves to their vaginas, to objects for male consumption. They had turned on one another over a boy who visited the school once a month, a cheater at that. If they could turn on each other in a community designed for their safety and emancipation, what chances did mwenkanonkano have out there in the world? The nuns might have removed any male influence within the school gates, but by the time the girls arrived, the shrinking herb had already been sewn into their skins.'

‘Nothing takes the sting out of a woman like marriage. And when children arrive, the window closes. Wife, mother, age, and role model – the “respect” that comes with these roles is the water they pour on your fire.’

I knew Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi as the winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, which was one of the main reasons I picked this book up. Now I also plan to read Kintu. Dear writer, thank you so much for writing this book. :)