Book: The First Woman
Author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Publisher: Oneworld
Price: £16.99

“Stories have such power you cannot imagine,” says the village witch to Kirabo, the young protagonist of The First Woman. It is this power of storytelling that Jennifer N. Makumbi explores in this novel, as she emphasizes the need to wield one’s own discourse as an “act of resistance” against stronger voices that attempt to drown it out.

As a dark-skinned girl with a rebellious streak growing up in a conservative Ugandan village, Kirabo’s life story is shaped by other stories — the ones people tell her as gossip, those passed down generations as mythology, stories she tells herself and gathers by lived experience. But The First Woman is as much the story of Uganda as of Kirabo. Like most books that combine history with fiction, the novel is multi-layered — as the plot progresses, Makumbi analyses ancient folklore, political history, prevalent gender and class discrimination, the politics of ethnicity and skin colour, and deep-rooted social prejudices. Makumbi’s choice of employing a coming-of-age story to achieve this is significant. She weaves these layers neatly around the single thread of Kirabo’s life: the reader discovers diverse facets of Ugandan life along with Kirabo, following her perspective.

The First Woman Author by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Oneworld, £16.99 Amazon

Much of the novel — set in the 1970s and 1980s — unfolds under the oppressive regime of Idi Amin. Yet, Makumbi makes sure that the broader history remains blended inconspicuously into the narrative. Kirabo’s initial experiences of the political world come with Amin’s ban on women wearing short skirts or trousers. As she moves to a boarding school in the city, the instances of oppression become starker: the fathers of some of her classmates disappear, while girls from families of army men turn up in flashy, expensive clothes.

The First Woman foregrounds the need for women to reclaim their agency — an agency that is inherent, but has been subjugated by patriarchal discourse. In Kirabo’s case, this defiant spirit manifests itself in the form of her out-of-body experiences. Unembraced by her, the spirit keeps flying out of her body. Laced with humour and delightful tales of female bonding, this book is an invaluable addition to modern feminist writing.