Around 15 years ago, TED Talks uploaded a talk by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who had already published 'Purple Hibiscus' and 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by then. The talk was on what Adichie called the danger of a single story. In it, she spoke about growing up in eastern Nigeria on a diet of stories by British and American authors. Consequently, she told the audience, the earliest stories she wrote at age 7 too were populated by people who were blue-eyed, ate apples, drank ginger beer and played in the snow. Never mind that these things had nothing to do with her lived experience. (Those of us born in India and encouraged to read in English through school can perhaps relate.) Adichie, of course, found African writers like Chinua Achebe ('Things Fall Apart') and Camara Laye ('A Dream of Africa') as she got older, and her books today are a partial cure for that danger of the single story. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest book, her first in a decade, titled 'Dream Count', is a case in point.
Released the world over on March 4, 'Dream Count' throws you headlong into the world of four women from West Africa. The four women are Chiamaka, her best friend Zikora, her cousin in Abuja Omelogor and her maid in the US, Kadiatou - a Guinean woman who immigrates to the US with her daughter Binta, to be with her childhood sweetheart Amadou. Through the four women, the novel unpacks multiple strands. There are frequent mentions of the Nigerian passport and the difficulties of getting visas to first-world countries. Of migrating to the United States. Of having and raising kids as a single mom - part of this particular segment has been spun off into a separate story as well, titled 'Zikora'. Of what success at work and in life means to each of these women. Of mothers and daughters. Of wealth and attitudes to it. Of being a Black woman in a world that can be hostile to Black people, especially women. Of love stories in which the men end up objectifying, using and abusing, and denying the women in these relationships basic respect and dignity. Of harassment and rape - Adichie revisits the sexual assault case brought against then-International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn by Nafissatou Diallo, "a West African woman living in America".
Despite this heft, the novel doesn't feel heavy. Partly because Adichie doesn't seem to be at pains to detail the West African or Black experience to the rest of the world. The stories of these four women - their pursuit of love, money, fulfilment - are of course moored and steered by where they come from and their interactions with the world outside Africa. But the novel takes for granted some knowledge of African foods, customs and history - in much the same way that an English or American novel might take for granted the readers' knowledge of their customs. Having said that, the various love relationships of the women, as well as their engagements with friends and family offer both textural specificity and a kind of universality to their stories: their search for love and self-advancement is not unique to them though their path to realizing these in their own lives are very much their own.
Through all the boys Chia has loved
The story begins with Chiamaka (Chia) almost confessing: "I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being." Over the next hundred-odd pages, and then again in the final 50 pages of 'Dream Count', we find her seeking this connection in her own (broken) romantic relationships and appreciating it in the others she observes around her on her travels. Indeed, the title has something to do with a body count of the not-so-dreamy lovers and love connections she forms.
To start, there is Darnell the intellectual, one of whose friends "spoke of Africa only as a place where her friends worked... It was hilarious." Then there is Chuka, with whom she breaks up because "I could no longer ignore that exquisite ache of wanting to love a lovely person that you do not love". There's the Englishman who's never named, but whom she meets via a Jan Morris fan site and feels a deep connection with - only to find out later that he's been hiding something important from her. There's Luuk who's materialistic and driven in a way that she can't relate to. The Swede Johan, with whom things start out well but fizzle out quickly. There are all the men with whom she might have had a relationship, but didn't. The Kenyan businessman who "dabbled a bit in political affairs" and hoped there were more African travel writers writing about African destinations. Or the tall Indian boy with the heavy-lidded eyes from the video shop in Ilupeju - Lagos' Little India - who she knew would not leave his friends to come talk to her even though he looked at her with longing.
With the exception of Chuka, the nice Igbo man her friends and family are rooting for, each of these relationships fails for much the same reason: the men end up being self-centered, even cruel to Chia in some way. Her relationships also offer a foil to those of the other three women who drive the narrative. For the first 90 pages, 'Dream Count' feels like a story about Chia introspecting about her loves and her life as the Covid lockdown forces everyone indoors. But the story makes room for worlds beyond hers soon enough: That of America-based Nigeria lawyer Zikora's strained relationship with her mother, and her own experience of delivering her son; Abuja, Nigeria-based banker-turned-Robinhood-style philanthropist Omelogor's unease with her own financial success built upon corruption and deception of the general public, and her blog for men confused about how to be pro-women in the world of dating and elsewhere; and Guinean immigrant in the US Kadiatou's fear of deportation and her hopes for her daughter in the US. Each has their backstory and desires.
What 'Dream Count' is about
In a rare insight into the author's mind, Adichie tells us at the end of the book that mother-daughter relationships are a throughline in 'Dream Count'. That she wrote it while grieving for her own mother who died in 2021. This reading of the novel as one about mothers and daughters offers another register, one that isn't always obvious until you read the endnote and then you can see it everywhere. As Adichie writes in her note, "Novels are never really about what they are about. At least for this writer. Dream Count is, yes, about the interlinked desires of four women, but, in a deeply personal way not obvious, at least not immediately so, to the reader, it is really about my mother. About losing my mother..."
For those of us who find their knowledge of West Africa and West African histories wanting, 'Dream Count' is also an exceptional introduction. For example, through Kadiatou's story we learn about the 2009 Guinea Stadium Massacre where security forces and followers of military ruler Captain Moussa Dadis Camara killed at least 150 pro-democracy protesters. (It's easy to imagine that the incident is as well-known to West Africans as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is to us on the Indian subcontinent.)
There are details of West African foods and recipes, too. There's okpa for breakfast and moi moi that precipate a bit of drama in the house of Omelogor who can't stand Africans dissing African foods. Even the cadences of, say, Omelogor's speech, and the way Chia hugs her boyfriend's mother offer hints of the way these women talk, think and move through the world. In one place, Chia says: General Abacha's government had just murdered Ken Saro-Wiwa and we were all sad, but Omelogor was behaving as if she had personally known him, snappy and sulky with everyone." (Ken Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian writer and social rights activist who was hanged by military dictator General Sani Abacha's government for leading a non-violent campaign against the environmental degradation of his native Ogoniland by European oil companies.)
Indeed, the book offers no lengthy explanations of movements, cultures, communities, practices, politics in West Africa or among African diaspora in the West. You get just enough information to whet your appetite to Google a guanabana or soursop fruit (African custard apple), a dish called fufu made with cassava and plantains, chin-chin sugar and dough treats, supergrain fonio and mounds of Jollof rice. There are descriptions of the lives of rich - and bored - wives in Abuja; the villages (Nimo, Umunnachi), the cities (Asaba, Conakry, Lagos), the corruption, the parties, even a bauxite mining town where dust enters both homes and lungs indiscriminately and with deadly consequences. The four women - starting, and ending, with wealthy Nigerian travel writer Chiamaka who's based in the US - offer the filters through which the narrative strands flow, joining and unjoining in a richly detailed tapestry.
Chia's profession offers many opportunities for Adichie to unpack the Black female experience in the world. Early on in the book, Chia says: "White people don't think we also dream."
Originally from Nigeria, Chia lives in the US and travels the world, from the British Virgin Islands to Trieste in Italy, Krakow, Santiago, Colombo, Rio, Auckland, Dakar, London, Moscow, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Alsace-Lorraine in Germany, Palestine and New Delhi. Towards the end of the book, there's mention of her trip to India. In one scathing paragraph, she hints at the Black woman's experience in India's capital: "Years later, in Delhi, the men startled me with their looking, and I thought of the guy with the half-closed eyes in the video shop in Ilupeju (Little India in Lagos). An online magazine refused to publish my piece on Delhi unless I removed the sentence The men stared at me in a way I have never been stared at before, a hard, barefaced staring, not with harmless admiration but with a darkness that frightened me."
To be sure, Chiamaka doesn't just single Delhi out as unwelcoming and even frightening. A few pages later, she observes: "I mentally prepare myself for hostility in small places, but sometimes it's in the larger cities that you feel Blackness as this heavy thing that you have to rise above. Moscow was like that..."
Through Chia's love of travel and travel writing, Adichie also creates opportunities to pay homage to some fantastic writers, artists and musicians. For, Chiamaka's range of interests include Jan Morris's works - a fan site dedicated to them brings her in contact with a tall Essex man whom she vibes with and dates, only to discover later that they can't be together; and Ethiopia-born Wilfred Thesiger's photos. In short, you can read the book as a story about four women; or a book about the kinds of reminiscing and introspection unleashed by the Covid lockdowns worldwide; or as a cure to the single story, stopping periodically to google what you want to learn more about, because the book incorporates details about West Africa that can serve as so many search terms for the curious.
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