AiW Guest: Spemba Elias Spemba.
AiW note: this is the first in our 2024 Caine Prize Shortlist Reviews series, of Nigerian writer ‘Pemi Aguda’s shortlisted story, ‘Breastmilk’, published in One Story, in 2021.
NB: Our reviews may contain spoilers! Read ‘Breastmilk’ in full, available via the shortlisted stories page on the Caine Prize website.
Pemi Aguda’s ‘Breastmilk’ relates Aduke’s ordeal as she struggles with postpartum challenges and her feelings of detachment from her newborn son, Fikayo. While it seems to hint at the subject directly, the title, ‘Breastmilk’, fixedly binds readers’ eyes to a female protagonist, a (Nigerian) woman wrestling with her inability to produce breast milk while trying to come to terms with her husband Timi’s recent infidelity. As a result of this betrayal, she suffers unreconciled, or rather, in Aguda’s rendering, unimaginable emotional scars. Even so, Aduke’s mother, who is a strong radical feminist, serves as both a contrast and a mirror to Aduke’s conflicted feelings about motherhood and forgiveness. The story thus becomes a multilayered narrative that follows Aduke’s journey to reclaim her identity and explore the complex terrain of cultural expectations and maternal instincts, while seeking emotional healing for herself and her family.
‘Breastmilk’ stands out for its candid portrayal of a woman’s inner life following childbirth. The narrative capitalizes the author’s talent for capturing ordinary and yet complex, but often unspoken emotions. A structural blend of the protagonist’s present-day experiences and past reflections of her family, Aguda succeeds in heightening the tension and vulnerability women endure at this critical point in their lives. Also remarkable is how the author skillfully traverses themes of betrayal and resilience in crafting a story that represents a nuanced perspective on postpartum life that avoids a sentimentalist approach to motherhood.
While several stories about motherhood intertwine in the narrative, Aguda’s pairing of this central focus with the themes of forgiveness, identity, and cultural tension in a raw, emotionally rich narrative makes her story unique, offering up a refreshing perspective. The story’s originality also lies in how it tackles motherhood’s psychological and physical complexities. This is especially true in the investment in the theme of breastfeeding throughout the plot, appearing as metaphor for connection, femininity, and cultural expectations. This is coupled with Aguda’s deft use of symbolism, especially that of breast milk, so strategically lauded in the title, serving as a powerful device to represent Aduke’s sense of inadequacy and her struggle to connect with her son amidst her unresolved trauma.
In this way, this compact story also epitomises literary richness in that it presents multiple layers of meaning and significant themes beneath the surface of its plot. Breastfeeding then gives access to an exploration of betrayal, forgiveness, and the challenge of internalising the actions of others, especially as one considers family legacy and personal agency. Including cultural nuances, such as Yoruba/Nigerian naming traditions and generational attitudes toward women’s autonomy, Aguda enriches these themes further, making them resonate deeply with African ways of knowing.
In its prose style, ‘Breastmilk’, although concise, is detailed, almost visceral, with a strong sense of rhythm and control that sustains the emotional gravity it carries. Its investment in psychological preoccupation and relation to motherhood allows readers to feel the protagonist’s ambivalence, confusion, and fatigue. At the same time, the narrative journey offers a perspective that is both intimate and universal, with the language flooding readers with a resonant exploration of Aduke’s strength and capacity for reconciliation. Aguda’s creativity is also strongly anchored in characterisation. While her characters are endowed with a sense of authenticity and act as psychosocial beings, in a special way, the protagonist is crafted with depth and nuance, revealing her struggle with conflicting emotions toward her husband, son, her mother – a powerful secondary character – and herself.
At times, perhaps due to Aguda’s use of the brevity inherent to the form and despite the relevance of events, shifts between raw, introspective prose and moments of cultural commentary (e.g., the naming ceremony or traditional gender expectations) feel abrupt, disrupting flow and the otherwise integrated cohesion with the protagonist’s emotional state. Even while we see her struggle with forgiveness and resentment, the protagonist’s ambivalent feelings toward her husband and child, her emotional journey – these can sometimes feel opaque, leaving this reader wanting. Similarly, some of the characters, such as Aduke’s mother and husband, can appear more as foils for the protagonist’s feeling so torn between what they represent and her own sense of self – Timi as a figure for repentance, for example; or Aduke’s mother as headstrong and activist.
Importantly, though, the story’s ending provides readers with room for reflection. ‘Breastmilk’ is a captivating and powerful story in rich prose, with a probing depth to its thematic preoccupations. The absence of any kind of waste, in prose, plot, or characterisation, impacts the story’s pace, especially effective in leaving its lasting impression. The protagonist’s journey feels authentic, building to a path that suggests self-rejuvenation – self-healing and self-acceptance – evoking a complex mixture of relief, sorrow, and hope. Concise yet evocatively suggestive, Aguda’s careful choices when moulding her main character’s introspection allows us to share her painfully intimate and universally relatable experience, realistically everyday, yet with lasting emotional impact.
Spemba Elias Spemba is a lecturer in Literature at the University of Dar es Salaam, Mkwawa University College of Education. He holds a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University. Spemba’s research works mainly focus on issues and themes related to disability, gender, vulnerability, and agency, with peculiar interests in both Western and African theoretical postulations. His notable works explore fictional and autobiographical representations of albinism and social issues in South and East African Literature and the COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzanian popular songs.
Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and the winner of the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Award. Her writing has been published in One Story, Granta, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize for short fiction in 2022 and 2023. She is the author of a collection of stories, Ghostroots (W.W. Norton, 2024; Virago Press, 2024; and Masobe Books, 2024). Pemi is from Lagos, Nigeria.
Photo credit: IfeOluwa Nihinola, courtesy Caine Prize.
Catch up with the writer’s perspective on ‘Breastmilk’ , on the significance of being an editor in relation to writing from the continent, and more besides with Pemi’s Words On / Caine Prize 2024 Shortlist Q&A.
Read ‘Breastmilk’, along with all the stories shortlisted for 2024, via the Caine Prize website, or by clicking direct on ‘Shortlist…The Stories’ image below.
For more on the 2024 shortlist and the changes to the format of the Prize, looking ahead to its anniversary edition in 2025, visit: https://www.caineprize.com/.
All our ‘Words On / Caine Prize’ 2024 Shortlist Q&As
– find them, with all our coverage so far, here…
With thanks to all our Caine Prize 2024 Shortlist story reviewers this week; and special thanks to Wesley Macheso; and congrats to all those shortlisted for the 2024 Prize.