The Girl with the Louding Voice

“The black of a mourner!” 

Enitan asks Adunni which color lipstick they should prepare for the imminent wedding to Morufu. Adunni thinks to herself that she should select “the black of a mourner” (16). Her choice reveals the seriousness of the situation. Adunni views the marriage to Morufu like a death. The wedding will be a symbolic funeral at which she mourns the loss of her dreams. Adunni keeps these thoughts to herself, however. She is already beginning to plot how she might escape from her situation. 

“My wedding be like a movie inside the tee-vee.”

Adunni watches her wedding unfold but feels entirely disconnected from the world. The spectacle of the wedding is separate from her reality. It feels about as real to her as the strange people and places she glimpses through the television. Adunni’s despair removes her from the situation and turns her into a passive observer of her own wedding. She watches on with no control or input, just like a television viewer. The horror of Adunni’s wedding is that it entirely removes her from a situation which is meant to be happy and celebratory. Instead, she feels numb and unable to connect with anyone. 

“Even with two lanterns giving light, the room is like a burial coffin.”

Adunni’s first sexual experience is narrated like a funeral. The low light reminds her of a “burial coffin” (36), and the negative, horrific emotional weight of the experience presses down on her. The first night with Morufu is a symbolic funeral. Adunni’s childhood dies when she reluctantly has sex with the older man. Her innocence and her youth are now in her past, and she is changed forever. Adunni buries her childhood on her first night of marriage to Morufu. 

“Me, I am fighting with what I have inside of me, with my stomach for getting pregnants.” 

Adunni fears pregnancy as she searches for a way to escape her marriage to Morufu. She wants to fight back against her situation but cannot think of a way to do so. Meanwhile, Khadija has weaponized her own fertility. She views her ability to give Morufu children as a way to keep herself safe and to stay away from poverty. She was once in a situation similar to Adunni’s but has compromised her desires. Khadija now only wants a safe place for herself and her children. She has turned pregnancy into a struggle for survival and a way to preserve what she loves the most. 

“Today is my day to shine.” 

Labake treats Adunni with scorn, revealing her self-centeredness. As she and Morufu prepare to go to Kike’s wedding, Labake dismisses the idea that Adunni would be invited to the ceremony. The wedding is her “day to shine” (49). Kike is irrelevant in Labake’s conception of the wedding. The event is for the benefit of Labake, rather than Kike. She views the day as a celebration of her own brilliance rather than a traditional wedding. Labake turns her daughter’s wedding into a party for herself. 

“It is Death, making a announcement, giving us big, big warning.” 

The thunderstorm gathers as Khadija is led to the river. Adunni views the storm as a reflection of the negative emotions and foreboding which begin to swirl around Khadija. A situation in which the characters’ environment reflects their emotional state is called pathetic fallacy, though Adunni does not know the literary term. She can only sense the prevailing darkness which will soon change her life forever. 

“I close my mouth; begin to run.” 

In narrating her story, Adunni speaks in the present tense and uses the words and phrases she would in normal conversation. When her emotional state becomes panicked and nervous, her narration reflects this. Adunni is scared that she will be killed by a vengeful mob. As she decides to run, the syntax of her sentences becomes terse and sharp. Sentences are short, punctuation breaks up the clauses, and Adunni skips over pronouns as she struggles to come to terms with the reality of the situation. 

“The dress just gum his wet self to my skin and give me a squeeze.” 

As Adunni runs through the storm to escape a dangerous situation, the rain soaks into her dress and becomes a heavy metaphor for her fears. The dress clings to her skin so tightly that she cannot escape it. The fabric becomes heavy and makes movement more difficult. No matter how much she tries to squeeze the water from the clothes, the rain keeps them wet. The wet dress represents Adunni’s panic. She cannot escape her fearful thoughts just like she cannot escape the rain. Her fear drags her down and makes movement difficult as she searches for an escape. 

“Thank you, I say with no voice.”

The novel uses voices as a metaphor for Adunni’s agency. She wants to stand up for herself and take control of her life, a desire which she expresses through the search for her voice. Adunni hides in Iya’s room and relies on her brother’s lies to escape her father. This is her weakest moment, when she has little to no control over her life. She wants to thank people but says it “with no voice” (73). The silence of Adunni’s voice is a reflection of the lack of control she has over her life. 

“The thick cloth of shame, of sorrow, of heart pain.” 

Adunni is forced to leave her village and go into hiding in Lagos. She always wanted to experience life outside of her rural existence, but her wish is granted in the most difficult way possible. She achieves one of her dreams but does so while enduring shame, sorrow, and heartache. Though Adunni is still young, the emotional extremes of her life are more than most people will ever endure. 

“Money is always good.” 

Kola provides a summation of his morality. Adunni asks him about Big Madam, and his overriding sentiment is that "money is always good" (82). Both Kola and Big Madam are embroiled in a version of modern-day slavery, but he justifies himself with the money he earns. Money is always good to Kola, and the origin or the morality of the money is irrelevant. He will do anything for money, including kidnapping children and selling them as domestic workers, all while stealing their wages. 

“Here we behave like sane people. We have class. We have money.” 

Big Madam equates sanity, class, and money. Under that logic, no person with money could ever be insane or lacking in class. Big Madam and her husband are bad people, but they are rich. They believe that their wealth insulates them from criticism. This framework dictates that beating a young girl for singing while she works is not insane, while a young girl singing while she works is insanity. Money corrupts Big Madam and disrupts her idea of morality, class, and sanity.

“They all run away in the end, don’t they?”

The wealthy women talk about their housemaids as though they are disposable commodities. Big Madam hires girls like Adunni and does not care where they come from or what they might have experienced. She absolves herself from any blame or emotional attachment to the girls because they “all run away in the end” (113). The girls she hires are only ever temporary and fleeting. They mean nothing to her and she does not see them as people but as outlets for her own frustration and living justifications for her loathing of poor people.

“One day, I will collect my own free back from Big Madam.” 

Adunni frames her own freedom in the context of Nigerian independence. Nigeria was a colony of Great Britain until 1960. Adunni learns about this in a book and cannot understand why a distant country would have control of another. Similarly, she cannot understand why Big Madam has a similar degree of control over her. Adunni wants to become independent like Nigeria. She may not speak perfect English, but she is intelligent enough that she can create complex, abstract metaphors to frame her own ambitions. 

“What more can I do to make you see me as I am, as a woman worth loving?” 

Although Big Madam beats Adunni relentlessly and willfully engages in many crimes, Adunni is occasionally able to glimpse a more sympathetic side of Big Madam. She is desperate for her unfaithful husband to love her, which suggests that Big Madam is part of a vicious cycle of pain and betrayal. She is hurt by Big Daddy and takes out her pain on Adunni and everyone else. This sympathetic portrayal does not absolve Big Madam of her transgressions, but it helps to create a more rounded, sympathetic character. 

“Write your truth, Ms. Tia say. Your truth.”

Adunni remembers Tia’s words and decides that her essay will need to be brutally honest. Adunni no longer wants to adhere to the image society wants to have of her. She does not want to be the little girl that her father, Morufu, Kola, or Big Madam want her to be. She decides to write her truth, which is a bleak and violent story of how she survived through terrible circumstances. Adunni’s strength is that she can endure such pain while being honest and brave enough to share her pain with the world. 

“And the Jesus in the picture is no more vexing His face.” 

Adunni visits the ritual bath with Tia and is horrified when Tia is beaten savagely. As she exits the building, Adunni sees another woman being prepared to face the same treatment. At the same time, she catches a glimpse of a picture of Jesus who no longer seems angry. Instead, Jesus is tired. To her, this expresses that the judgment of God is exhausted by the constant violence in the world. Adunni has seen so much pain and misery that she empathizes with the exhausted Jesus. She can no longer bring herself to be shocked or disappointed by the violence of the world. 

“Yesterday I tasted your normal.” 

Tia endures a horrific experience in the ritual bath. She takes this pain and uses it to better understand Adunni’s life. Adunni has been beaten, raped, and subjected to treatment that most people could not endure. Tia is given a brief glimpse into this painful world and now better understands Adunni. Tia is a sympathetic character because, even in her lowest moment, she uses her pain as a way to learn more about others.

“I am a slave with no chain.” 

The more Adunni learns about the racial injustices of the past, the more she understands her present situation. When she first arrived in Lagos with Kola, Adunni could not conceive of herself as a slave. As she learns about the history of slavery and the history of Nigeria, she begins to see her situation as a continuation of historical injustices. She may not have chains around her wrists, but she is a slave to her environment. Adunni’s growing awareness of her freedom allows her to fight for her independence. 

“I just want to help Big Madam and beg her to stop crying.” 

Big Madam beats Adunni until she is bleeding from the head. She mistreats her staff constantly and shows little to no remorse. Yet even after months of torture, Adunni can still summon sympathy for Big Madam. She is not obsessed with vengeance or inflicting her pain on others. She wants to help people, regardless of who they are or what they have done. This desire separates Adunni from the rest of the world. While people like Big Madam and Big Daddy take out their pain and frustration on others, Adunni only ever wants to help. 

“The word ‘rape’ sounds like a knife-cutting.” 

Adunni finally vocalizes the truth about her situation. She has avoided the word “rape” for most of the novel, either because she did not know the word or because she could not conceive of a world in which her consent was relevant. Her experiences with Morufu and Big Daddy are examples of rape. Adunni finally accepts the reality of what has happened to her and understands the pain of what she has endured. 

“And me, I was here thinking she was sad and angry because Big Daddy wanted to rape me.” 

Adunni is capable of moments of incredibly bleak humor. Her sympathetic mind assumed that Big Daddy’s regrets were actually remorse for his attempted rape of a young girl. Instead, he was worried about losing his wife’s money. She reflects on this and finds humor in the situation. Adunni realizes that she gave Big Daddy too much credit. She begins to understand the absurdity of her endless sympathy and finds humor in this absurdity. 

“The wall in the room we shared will remind them that we were here. That we were human. Of value. Important.” 

Adunni scratches her name and Rebecca’s name into the wall of the bedroom. She has been sent across Nigeria, living in other people’s houses at the whim of other people for her entire life. Writing the names on the wall gives Adunni a sense of permanence and belonging which has otherwise been absent from her life. Housemaids are treated as disposable commodities, so the names on the wall create a legacy which gives purpose and meaning to the lives of the girls who lived in the room. Adunni declares that she was here, that she mattered enough to have a name, and that she was able to have an impact on the world.