The Falodun women are cursed that “No man will call your house, home. And if they try, they will not have peace.” Generations later 12-year-old Ebun tells her 16-year-old cousin Monife that she doesn’t believe in curses. Monife replies “what if the curse believes in you?” Do you think the curse is real? How do you think the curse impacted each generation of the Falodun family differently?
Monife’s situation was tragic. I think her relationship to Golden Boy was fated from the beginning to end. Looking from the outside in, there was no circumstance in which his mother was going to accept Monife and Golden Boy was never going to stand up to his mother though he, himself, may not have recognized that. Was it the curse? I don’t think so. I think Golden Boy was not honest with himself, and Monife was a hopeless romantic. I think the women in the family had a lot of self sabotaging behaviors and just took it for granted that their relationships were beyond their control because of the curse.
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I think Golden Boy would have stood up to his parents and married Monife. What he finally couldn’t do was continue in the relationship when she clearly did not trust him and apparently never would.
Despite all her bravado, Monife believed in the curse and she made it come true.
If you believe in a curse so deeply then it is a curse.
I think their relationship was fated to end, but not because of the curse, but because Golden Boy was immature and Monife was hopelessly romantic.
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I think the reason the curse worked was they all believed it to be real. They created a self fulfilling prophecy.
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Yes the curse is real in the imagination of the Falodun women! Each was a participant in their own self prophesied tragedies and participated in ingraining the curse in future generations. Even Ebun who said she did not believe in the curse or that her daughter was her cousin Monica reincarnated was terrified when her daughter threatened to walk into the waters.
I don’t think the curse was real. I agree with others that the women believed it was real or were afraid to deny it. I hope that Eniiyi will be able to move beyond it, but that is not clear. She was making changes to distance herself, but she didn’t have enough belief in herself to continue her relationship with Zubby.
I don’t think the curse was real, but the family women absolutely did. They used it to give a pass to the men in their lives, and to themselves as well. Perhaps that opinion is not fair, since I have not grown up in a culture that believes in curses; but one of my biggest takeaways from the book was to be grateful that I did not have such a crutch in my life. Relationships are hard work, and it is tempting to give yourself a pass, whether a curse or something else that excuses you.
If you believe a curse is real, you will act in ways that that it a self fulfilling prophecy.
It’s not so easy to undo the storyline emphasized your entire life by the parental figures as you mature. The said ‘curse’ constantly recited was believed to rule the lives of these women, so much so that “free will” never existed. The fact that Eniiji attended college and held a degree in genetic counseling gave her a path away from fear and superstitions but, once back in the house of her mother and aunties plunged her righ back into the darkness. She had been compared to her cousin Monife from her birth. How could she be herself in their midst? Why else did she hide her relationship with Zubby for so long? Her mother, Ebun tried to push Osagie Obasuyi into the past also, evan when he persisted.
I think that is so true! The older women had some bad luck and turned it into a curse that they drilled into the girls heads!
The curse is not real. However, the idea of a curse can become self fulfilling. I think the idea of the curse became weaker with each generation.
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Completely agree. They make decisions with the curse in mind, accepting that bad things will happen, and it is reinforced by the family members.