The First Woman: Winner of the Jhalak Prize, 2021

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I found that the role of a the First lady at times could serve as a microcosm of the issues facing women in America: working mom, stay at home mom, sitting at the table, staying behind the scenes, issues in marriages, issues with children; all of those things have and do come up. Many of the women profiled never wanted that role. Some dreamed of nothing better. All tried to put their unique stamp on it and at times found themselves damned if they did and damned if they didn't. And in this day and age, It was interesting to learn that how much of the First Lady's role is still truly like a traditional housewife who plans state dinners, menus, flowers, parties. The book is in five distinct sections, with each showing an older and more mature Kirabo, a Uganda of decades past and all the nuances and revelations of growing up.

From where the world starts to where it ends, when women start to lament men the sun could drop from the sky and they would not realise. ” The contrast of a rural upbringing versus an urban existence, the striving for and effect of education on girls and the natural way that local Ugandan folklore and ancestral stories are part of a way of living and developing and coming of age, in helping young people travel through their concerns and sorrows and strange feelings and unanswered questions. our Original State ….. was wonderful for us. We were not squeezed inside, we were huge, strong, bold, loud, proud, brave, independent. But it was too much for the world and they got rid of it. However occasionally the state is reborn in a girl like you. But in all cases it is suppressed At six months of age, Kirabo Nnamiiro was given to Miiro and Alikisa to raise. Their son Tom was Kirabo's father. Motherless Kirabo, now 12, wanted to find the mother who abandoned her. She secretly consulted with the town witch, Nsuuta. Deep, dark secrets! Why were Grandmother and Nsuuta, once close friends, now arch enemies? Why did Grandmother birth Tom only to give him to Nsuuta to raise? "Traditionally, wives share children. You could not leave your co-wife to live a childless life while you hoard all your progeny to yourself". It was well advised for Tom to take Kirabo to the city with him.

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In 2015 I started a project of reading biographies and memoirs about first ladies. I have managed to read most of the biographies except a few hard to find ones. I also learned that the rule book says first ladies is not to be capitalized. This book about the first ladies covers the first ladies from Kennedy to Obama and was published in 2017. The novel shows us how colonialism affected the communities and how their cultures and traditions were seen as inferior by the western people. The younger generation was eager to adopt the western-mindset and traditions, while the older generations wanted to hold on to their beliefs. Christianity became prominent and influential. It was forced on the villagers. The impact of colonialism and how destructive it is to a society’s identity is very well-depicted in this novel. In what I found the strongest part of the book – it then takes what I found an impressively mythical turn, as Nsutta explains her theory that (see the opening quote to my review) Kirabo’s flights are proof that she retains a tie to the First Woman/the original free state of women. She then explains that the myth making of men in all societies (including the story of Kintu – the inspiration for the author’s debut novel) first of all acted to justify the subjugation of the earth to humans and then, crucially, was developed to justify the subjugation of women to men – something which was wider than Africa It doesn’t help that Kirabo herself is rather obnoxious and self-centered, which is not uncommon for her age, but for me unpleasantness works better on more dynamic or complex characters. Worse, growing up never involves working on her flaws. I think the reader is intended to have far more sympathy for her stepmother than Kirabo ever does (immediately forgetting Nsuuta’s advice to be forgiving of other women). But Kirabo herself never reaches the point of considering why other people might have made the decisions they did rather than simply lashing out and seeking revenge for her own pain. I was disappointed when even at the end of the book she’s out for vengeance for her birth mother’s abandonment rather than attempting to understand what it would be like to give birth at 13(!) in a society where young single motherhood means an end to dreams for both schooling and marriage, and appreciating that she was raised by many loving relatives. The one thing that did not quite do it for me was the business of Kirabo looking for her mother. That part of the story even though was the major event that led to Kirabo’s curiosity was somehow off for me.

I read the audio book and first I want to mention the narrator because so many of the reviewers disliked her. I do not agree with those reviewers. I liked Ms. White's conversational manner. I felt as though we were sitting over beverages sharing knowledge. It was a simple, quiet and intimate conversation about the first ladies. I loved it. One caveat: I listen (always) at 1.5 speed or faster so perhaps that helped. DISCLAIMER :Thank you, Netgalley and OneWorld Publications for providing me with an ARC of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily. In the beginning women were bold, independent, and strong, “but it was too much for the world”. This folklore tale about the first women who walked the Earth is told in a small Ugandan village during the regime of one of history’s cruelest dictators – Idi Amin. The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a vivid, powerful coming-of-age story, which is driven by indigenous feminism: while her characters are trying to preserve their identity in a patriarchal society, their sense of self-worth is reinforced by ancient myths passed down from generation to generation. While I enjoyed the book, I felt it could have benefited by having a stronger editor. I felt too much was happening and the themes were not strongly fleshed out. There is the hint at magical realism at the start of the book that basically fizzled out and was not carried through the entire book. Her book brings a host of early female writers together, including Leoba, an English missionary and abbess of Tauberbischofsheim in Franconia who died in 782; and Hugeburc, an English nun who joined the Benedictine monastery of Heidenheim. Leoba’s one surviving letter features the earliest example of poetry by an Englishwoman (“Farewell, and may you live long and happily, making intercession for me,” runs Watt’s translation from the Latin), while Hugeburc wrote an account of the lives of the brothers St Willibald and St Winnebald. Hugeburc is seen as the first named English woman writer of a full-length narrative, with her authorship of the text only discovered in the 20th century, when her name was found to be encrypted in the manuscript. Unencrypted, the Latin reads: “ Ego una Saxonica nomine Hugeburc ordinando hec scribebam,” or “I, a Saxon nun named Hugeburc, wrote this”.She also makes the case that monastic writers of the time “overwrote” accounts by women of their own histories. One example, she claims, is Bede, who did not name the authors of the local books he drew upon for his account of the early abbesses of the English church in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Kirabo’s search – one she doesn’t always know she is undertaking – for the remnants of that “first woman” shapes Makumbi’s narrative, which sees Kirabo gradually uncovering her identity as those around her plan her life. First her father, part of an emerging class of political and entrepreneurial wheeler dealers, takes her to live with him in Kampala. There she gazes wistfully at advertising billboards in which happy families advertise washing powder; such tableaux are at odds with the scene at her father’s house, where she is confronted by a stepmother and half-siblings she didn’t know about, and where her comically monstrous stepmother is revealed to have been equally in the dark. The author did a great job of showcasing feminism and I really enjoyed how that theme was executed. It is not every day I read a book where feminism is at the forefront of the narrative and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

At turns rapturous and devastating... Makumbi's writing uplifts and inspires, evoking the grand tradition of folklore and stories passed down, one woman to the next.' - Refinery29 Particularly memorable among the many entertaining moments throughout the book, are how differing members of Kirabo’s family react to her blossoming sexuality. This is referred to as her “ruins”, by an increasingly alarmed grandmother and she is told, “That is your flower, explore it, love it, find out what it is capable of before you hand it over to a man” by her city-dwelling and somewhat bohemian Aunt Abi.The third section has village girl Kirabo attend a prestigious English language boarding school – her time there taking place against the increasing violence and disappearances (including Sio – now her boyfriend’s – father) and then civil war of Amin-era Uganda. The author has named Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions” as one of her key literary inspirations – but this reader was inevitably strongly reminded of “The Book of Not”. we are our circumstances. And until we have experienced all the circumstances the world can throw at us, seen all the versions we can be, we cannot claim to know ourselves. How, then, do we start to know someone else?”