Cursed Daughters: In Conversation with Oyinkan Braithwaite
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What is the central theme of 'Cursed Daughters'?
In the novel Cursed Daughters, the Faladin family women are afflicted by a curse. No men will call your houses home, and if they try, they will not have peace. Essentially, the romantic relationships are doomed to fail, and this causes three generations of women to suffer through heartbreak and to live under one roof. Cursed Daughters by Oyanko Braithwaite is the story of the youngest generation attempting to, perhaps unwisely, beat the curse, outrun the curse. It's contemporary literary fiction with maybe a touch of fantasy. It's set in Lagos, Nigeria and wicked sharp. And by the way, if you recognize the name Oyanko Braithwaite, It might be because she also published My Sister, the Serial Killer, which was an internationally critically acclaimed murder mystery back in 2018.
And while Cursed Daughters is definitely different than that one, it's already rightfully getting very good reviews. Today, I'm talking to Oyanko Brithwaite. This is Audiobook Cafe. I'm Jacob Szymanski. Cursed Daughters is available on Sila in synthetic audio. For the time being, you can find the human narrated audio version on Audible.
How does the curse affect the characters in the story?
It's about nine and a half hours long and narrated by three women, each given one of the three point of view characters. It's narrated by Diana Ikeni, Neiopia Clark, and Rurushi Opia. Here's a sample of that audiobook.
In these waters, the only creature that could flourish was Mamiwata. And Mamiwata was as far from the fabled mermaid as a creature could be. There was no shimmering fin, no haunting singing voice, no glossy skin. Instead, a mouth crowded with dagger teeth, hands that were deformed and decaying, features that were hard to look at but impossible to turn away from.
That was a sample from Cursed Daughters by Oinko Braithwaite. Orenko, thank you so much for making time. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me, Jacob. I'm excited.
Now, I only gave a very brief description of Cursed Daughters, but it's so much more than that. So in your own words, what's your new book about?
Gosh, I'd like to start off by sort of talking about Farami, who's a beautiful, confident, dark-skinned young woman. And she sees this man she likes come to her village and she seduces him. Unfortunately, he's already married. And his wife isn't too happy about this turn of events. So she promptly curses Farami. And the curse is that, you know, she will love in vain, that she will labor for the acknowledgement of men, but fall short of other women, that men will be like water in her palms. And but this curse doesn't just apply to her. It applies to her daughter, her daughter's daughter, her daughter's daughter, daughter on and on through the generations of the Faloduo. family and as you said earlier it kind of focuses on the three youngest characters in this family Munifer who is dead at the start of the story we know how but not why Ebun who's working very hard to secure a different future for her daughter and Eni who everyone thinks is a reincarnation of Munifer
And there's this idea that the youngest person of the three main characters, Enni, is the reincarnation of Monife, which is the second youngest in the book. Is reincarnation a common belief in Nigeria? And if so, what does it mean? What happens when someone is believed to be a reincarnation? What's the implication?
So the thing is, on the one hand, I would say, no, it's not a common belief in Nigeria. At least it's not something that I've really heard discussed in any great detail. But we have some names here. that kind of indicate that the belief system might be there. And what I mean by we have names is that, just like my name is Oyinko, someone else's name might be Yetunde or Babatunde. Now, Yetunde means mother has come back, or Babatunde means father has come back. They have come again. So, you know, even that naming tradition suggests that at least maybe they used to be, or...
What inspired Oyinkan Braithwaite to write 'Cursed Daughters'?
or something you know or even maybe it might just be some people might just use it now to remember the person that is gone as opposed to a belief that the person has come back but um i think it's those kind of names as well that drew my attention to it okay just the etymology of it at this point um now reincarnation is just one of the ideas of this book but i'm curious like how the ideas around cursed daughters came to you initially
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