Book Notes, Fiction # His Only Wife By Peace Adzo Medie, 2020 ★☆☆☆☆ First read in April 2022 --- This is a very, very bad book. I used to not finish books like these, but here I am - I read through the whole unreadable thing and got very angry with the book. While I waited for the anger to fade away, I started questioning it. Not its legitimacy - I know exactly why I’m angry and I stand by my reasons. But its usefulness. What good does it do me to be angry with this book? No good at all, I soon concluded. In fact, this anger will likely just harden my conceptions about the world, as any anger usually does. And that’s not very useful - hardening something that’s already very hard.  So no mention of the many, many reasons why I find this book to be very, very bad. Instead, here are some of the thoughts I thought after the anger faded.  - **feminism is not only intellectual** - it can manifest itself in such forms as “boss bitches” and bring about genuine positive change to the lives of those it impacts; - **feminism is not only radical** - one single small gesture that breaks away from binding norms, matters; - **feminism can mean saying no** in one place and saying yes in other places. Poor uneducated girls in highly patriarchal societies across the world all dream the same dream - the Cinderella dream - because that’s truly as bold and daring as you can possibly fantasise on internalised sexism and hunger - marrying the richest man of the land. Maybe in some places being a feminist just means daring to say no to polygamy, while carrying on being a dutiful daughter in every single other aspect of your life.  (TIL that polygamy is legal in large parts of Africa, known as the "polygamy belt") Maybe feminism is not only the intellectual version of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but this thing as well, whatever this thing that this book is, is. --- `Just carbon and water. Just atoms and the void.` ---