Harare Review of Books

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I read romance very infrequently, but modern African literature has a long history of love stories, from Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine (1966), through Pacesetters, to recent works, like Bolu Babalola’s Honey & Spice, and Shirlene Obuobi’s On Rotation, both of which I have just read to bring you this review. 

Honey & Spice is the story of Kiki, a Nigerian-British university student who is determined to stay above the fray and not fall in love. She runs a radio programme, Brown Sugar, with her bestie, Aminah, where she gives out advice to the Black women on her campus. When she is caught out in a complicated situation with the campus “King,” she engineers a fake relationship with a hot newcomer—and you know how the rest goes.

In On Rotation, Angie, a medical student, has just broken up with her boyfriend of six months. She is completely fatalistic about love: she has not been successful in her relationships, and her life is so completely structured around her studies that she cannot imagine any scenario where things could come together for her. In addition, she comes from a close-knit Ghanaian-American family where her parents have strict rules about dating and courtship, and her younger sister has just got engaged in the most perfect way to the most perfect man. So when she unexpectedly meets Ricky, a Mexican-American, all of her toxic traits come out to convince her, and him, that they could not possibly work out.

What we have is two books about young, female African students, in the US and the UK, navigating school, love, and life. The writing is reasonably good in both: I felt that On Rotation could have been shorter, and tried to deal with too much, and that Honey & Spice tried a little too hard; but on the whole, these are good reads. 

I think often of Wanuri Kahiu’s 2017 TED Talk Fun, Fierce and Fantastical African Art. Kahiu talks about AfroBubbleGum, the advocacy of art for art’s sake: that art from Africa can just be fun, and not always have to be about poverty, disease, and charity; that Africans can be “healthy, financially stable, and not in need of saving.” Although the talk references science or speculative fiction, I have always thought this is a great lens for all of the art we produce on the Continent. These two books fit this criterion for me: they are “fun, frivolous, fierce and unserious,” to use Kahiu’s words.

This is not to say the books don’t deal with serious subject matter. Heartbreak, alienation, abuse in romantic relationships (including revenge porn), death, racism, and diasporic life are some of the topics tackled. However, it is wonderful to read about lives that are just lives, rather than foils for the Western conception of self. These are fun reads, not profound treatises on African lives. They are delightful, sometimes corny, and occasionally overdone; and I love them for that.

So, while neither of these books will be part of the formal, didactic African canon, read them for exactly what they are: fun love stories, with young, strong and interesting female protagonists, and quite a bit of spice. I recommend them both, and happy Women’s Month.