Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

The novel opens in 1960’s Nigeria, following the tale of Ijeoma, a young girl who lives in a small town called Ojoto with her mother, Adaora, and father, Uzo, in the middle of the Nigerian Civil War. Following an air raid at the start of the novel, Ijeoma and her mother Adaora escape unharmed but her father is killed. This leaves Ijeoma under Adaora’s care. The death of Uzo has a profound effect on Adaora’s mental health, sending her into a trance-like state. Eventually, Adaora soon decides to send Ijeoma away to the far away town of Nwewi, to live with family friends, under the idea that it’s safer and the right thing to do although Ijeoma is reluctant to move due to the strong bond she has to her mother as well her young age.

Ijeoma is taken in by a School Teacher, where she soon meets Amina, who becomes the object of her affection. The illicitness of the relationship and hesitation stemming from homophobic views from society puts strain on their relationship. Adaora, through frequently visiting Ijeoma, slowly begins to realise the affection that Ijeoma and Amina have for each other and expresses utter disapproval, quoting the bible and making Ijeoma swear allegiance to God and ultimately, to end the relationship and stop having ‘wrong’ feelings for each other. Eventually, Ijeoma is sent back to Ojoto to live with Adaora again while Amina remains with the school teacher. Ijeoma’s relationship with Amina slowly fizzles out thereafter.

Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Back home in Ojoto, Adaora makes it her goal to turn Ijeoma straight and preach (from the Bible) that homosexuality is wrong and that she must change (become heterosexual) to make it right. Adaora preaches that no lesbian relationship is right and that Ijeoma will feel the full force of God’s wrath if she doesn’t change her ways and end this lifestyle. Ijeoma is initially resistant to the strong influence exerted by her mother but eventually succumbs to the power of the Bible and tries to change and live a heterosexual life.

Having succumbed to the bible preaching, Ijeoma then takes a new, heteronormative outlook on life, marrying a man, with the objective to appear ‘normal’ in Nigerian society. She however eventually meets another female, Ndidi, whom she falls in love with. Adaora eventually realises the affection between the two and once again repeatedly bellows her disapproval and objection to her daughters love for Ndidi. Ijeoma soon afterwards finds a man named Chibundu, and ultimately in order make her mother happy and fit in with heteronormative standards, she marries him. Not too long afterwards, the two eventually have a child together.

Ijeoma’s marriage and relationship altogether with Chibundu eventually takes a turn for the worse when he finds some love letters Ijeoma had intended to send to Ndidi, and confronts her over this. The two end up fighting, Ijeoma eventually realises, through critically reinterpreting the very Bible that Adaora has used to preach homophobia that if God truly loves everyone, then that includes people of any sexual orientation, such as herself as well. Ijeoma then decides to leave the marriage with a man she ultimately never loved or was attracted to. The novel ends on a hopeful and more positive note, with Adaora also being able to critically reinterpret the very same Bible that preached homosexuality was wrong, and ultimately concludes that God accepts Ijeoma for who she is, ending the tension that plagued the mother-daughter relationship throughout the novel.

Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Themes

Feminism in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

feminism opine that women have the right to choose whatever they want to do with their life. Marriage is intended to avoid women from the freedom of men, but because there is no love or individuality without freedom, he must let go of love for special individuals to convince him to get life’s protection from men and live on their own terms, this Chinelo Okparanta portray using the character of Ijeoma. Again, in Under the Udala Tree, Okparanta showcases the loving and caring nature of her queer characters who are dismissed as nonentity in the midst of their haters. Ijeoma, a lesbian and queer parent exhibits so much love for her family (mother and daughter). This is evident when she says:

 …Here was my child; my flesh and my blood…I… felt a mixture of gratitude and delight. I held her hand against my body. A beautiful baby girl, healthy, no harelip, no curse. Here she was, a little human being whom I will love the way I saw fit- love overflowing, love unrestricted. (264)

Ijeoma’s loving attitude affirms the opinion in “Homosexuality and Africans: Pan-Africa Position on Gay Rights and Black Gays” which states, “every human deserves the dignity and not to extend this would violate our humanity: life is sacred and must be respected. Homosexuality is not the totality of someone’s identity; it is only one aspect of their humanness” [12].  Due to societal stereotypes, Ijeoma’s mother forced her into a marriage relationship to Chidi to save her face and that of her family. This is evident when she says:

Only a month later, Mama was painting my eye lids silver and my lips a bright shade of red…Mama had left the gate wide open, an invitation to the villagers to come in and join the celebration. She stood near the gate as I danced…. Towards the end of the celebration, Mama tugged at my shoulders; let me inside. “You’ve done well. Very well” she said. All over her face was a rabid kind of excitement… What a wonderful day for us all”, she said. “The day we’ve all been waiting for”. I did not see fit to respond. “Is something wrong?” Mama asked, but then she quickly brushed away the question, so determined was she that nothing will spoil this day for her (221-222).

Ijeoma’s resistance to this relationship isn’t a choice, but an opening to another sexual orientation which is bisexual. She becomes a very loving wife to Chidi as well as a lesbian practitioner. Her involvement in these homosexual escapades is one of her survival strategies. In Under the Udala Trees, LGBT practitioners use love as a weapon. Abhijit Naskar confirms, in “Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality”, that “Love has no gender-compassion has no region, character has no race” [18] Therefore, homosexual practitioners are also emotionally attached to each other. Ijeoma is a bisexual, who, though married to Chidi, still has very strong feelings for Amina, a lesbian partner. This is because the love they share is natural as she explains:

… Amina was close to me now that I felt an urge to lean in and kiss her. I began with her forehead. I took a stop at her nose. Soon I was at her lips, then at the crook of her neck, which was exposed by her loose nightgown…she continued along, leaving a trail of kisses on her way down to my belly. She travelled farther, beyond the belly, farther than we had ever gone. I moaned and surrendered myself to her. I did not until then know that a mouth could make me feel that way when placed in that part of the body where I had never imagined a mouth to belong (123-124).

Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

The budding love that exists between Ijeoma and Amina is a symbol of the love experience that LGBT practitioners experience in Africa. Chris Gibson writes that, “I think people should be authentic and who they are. If that calls people to same-sex attraction and same-sex marriage, then they should be true to who they are, and I think that the world could benefit by more love” Ijeoma, being in love with Amina or Ndidi as Gibson says is being “authentic”. She defends her love for her partner countless number of times before her mother. When she is asked by her mother if she still thinks of Amina “that way” (85), she replies that “Yes, I still think of her” …Yes I still think of her that way” (85). Ijeoma’s ability to accept that she still loves Amina shows that, she is courageous, bold, brave and assertive of her sexuality, and does not see it as a curse, but as something that is natural and acceptable to God.

Ijeoma therefore believes that, homosexuality is an orientation that is not forbidden by God but by man who wrote the Bible and made heterosexuality as the standard sexual orientation. The fact that Ijeoma questions her mother’s Biblical dogmas per her sexuality shows her as a critical thinker who does not accept Biblical rules and principles as gospel truth, but thinks that sexuality is as wide as the universe. This is demonstrated when she observes that: “So what if it was only the story of Adam and Eve that we got in the Bible? Why did that have to exclude the possibility of a certain Adam and Adam or a certain Eve and Eve? Just because the story happens to focus on a certain Adam and Eve did not mean that all other possibilities were forbidden…” (82-83).

In Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees, Ijeoma meets stiff resistance from her guardian and mother Adaora, when she falls in love with Amina. Adaora and Ijeoma’s guardian, who are symbols of the heterosexual culture in the text, decry the lesbian tendencies which these two women exhibit as unorthodox and un-African. This is evident when she says “…it is that same behavior that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the very same behavior… man lying with man” (73).

Okparanta has also made important reference to the theme of women, describing the novel as very “women oriented”. She further reiterates the significance of Ijeoma and Adaora’s mother-daughter relationship in the novel stating that “That family, that mother and daughter, will always be mother and daughter and will have to find a way even if forever they are fighting. They will find a way to coexist.”,[4] the latter sentence in the quote making reference to Adaora eventually accepting Ijeoma’s sexuality and that it cannot be altered.

Characterisation in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Ijeoma: The young female protagonist of the novel and the voice of the first person narrative. She is sent away from her mother early in the novel to live in Nwewi with a grammar teacher which is reportedly safer for her. Ijeoma is lesbian and must come to terms with her sexuality in a homophobic society. While growing up as a young girl, she falls in love and enters two separate relationships with two other female characters in the novel, Amina and Ndidi, neither of which last as Ijeoma eventually succumbs to fierce backlash from her mother. She reluctantly marries a man later in the novel, Chibundu, and has a child with him to comply with heteronormativity. Ijeoma eventually divorces Chibundu after growing tired of living in a marriage with a man she genuinely doesn’t love while Chibundu disapproves of Ijeoma’s previous affection towards Ndidi when it comes to light, and Ijeoma subsequently then moves back in with Adaora.

Adaora: Ijeoma’s mother. Shortly after her husband, Uzo, dies, she falls into a trance of following the Bible and its messages, which influences how she raises Ijeoma. Adaora preaching disapproval of Ijeoma’s homosexuality and associated relationships with other females is her wanting to do what’s ‘right’ for her daughter in terms of society, rather than attempting to be outright homophobic. Adaora becomes Chidinma’s grandmother when she is born, and by the end of the novel, eventually accepts that Ijeoma’s homosexuality is not able to be changed.

Uzo: Ijeoma’s father. Killed in an airstrike at the start of the novel, an event which has mental health consequences for Adaora and pushes her to resort to the Bible for solace, a move which affects how she treats Ijeoma for the rest of the novel. Uzo’s critical thinking skills displayed at the start of the novel, which Ijeoma herself inherits, and are vital for her to be able to critically reinterpret the bible herself and use this to eventually shut down the bible’s oppressive power.

Amina: A young girl who is Ijeoma’s first love interest in the novel. Like Ijeoma, Amina has also been impacted by the war and has been separated from her family and soon lives with Ijeoma and the School teacher. Amina and Ijeoma’s romantic and sexual relationship eventually falls apart from other authoritarian characters’ (such as Adaora and the School Teacher’s) disapproval and shaming upon finding out about the relationship.

The School Teacher: An elementary School teacher who takes in Ijeoma after Adaora sends her away to Nwewi. He eventually also takes in Amina after persuasion from Ijeoma.

Ndidi: Another teacher that Ijeoma falls in love with and starts a romantic and sexual relationship with, but as with Amina, it eventually crumbles when Adaora finds out and relentlessly oppresses her daughter into ending the relationship.

Chibundu: A young man that Ijeoma marries in order to comply with heteronormativity. Although Ijeoma lacks physical attraction to him, the two get along well enough to eventually have a child together, Chidinma. Ijeoma’s relationship with Chibundu turns sour when he discovers, through unsent letters, her previous affection for Ndidi and becomes hostile. Ijeoma then eventually grows tired of a marriage with a man she doesn’t love and divorces him.

Chidinma: Ijeoma’s daughter, who is born late in the novel during her marriage with Chibundu. When Ijeoma ends her marriage and relationship with Chibundu, she takes Chidinma with her when she goes back to live with Adaora.

Summary and Analysis of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Language and Style in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Tree

Narrative Style:  The novel’s narration is written in the first person and the past tense from Ijeoma’s perspective. Ijeoma is both the protagonist and the narrator, and she narrates the events of the novel in a retrospective manner. The main narrative takes place from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, and Ijeoma is narrating from the year 2014.

Symbolism

Dreams and Nightmares

In the novel, dreams and nightmares symbolize fears, epiphanies, and internal struggles. The characters often attempt to interpret their dreams and nightmares in terms of meanings related to their lives. For example, Amina interprets a nightmare as meaning that she should end her relationship with Ijeoma. Years later, Ijeoma has a nightmare that she interprets as meaning that she needs to escape her marriage immediately.

Bible

In the novel, the Bible symbolizes the dangers of tradition and narrow-mindedness. Adaora attempts to use Bible stories to convey the cultural belief that homosexuality is sinful and immoral. However, Ijeoma realizes that her mother’s interpretations of the Bible stories seem very narrow and wrongheaded, and that the Bible itself is just a reflection of specific, inflexible cultural ideas.

Mob Attacks

Mob attacks symbolize the extreme violence in which intolerance and oppression may manifest.