La Bastarda – Trifonia Melibea Obono (2016 trans. Lawrence Schimel 2018) 88 pages

My Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge is getting more difficult – but definitely possible – the closer I get to finishing, because I decided I’d only count books written by a person from that country, rather than just set there. This means I’m dependent on what is available in translation. So I was excited to come across La Bastarda, written by an author from Equatorial Guinea, and grateful to The Feminist Press for publishing it.

I didn’t realise until I’d finished it and googled further, that it’s a famous novella, banned in Equatorial Guinea and with its own Wikipedia page. It’s a wonderful read, so evocative and with a clear and compelling narrative voice. (The English translation also has a really interesting afterword by the historian Abosede George.)

The story is told by Okomo, who lives with her grandparents in a village close to the border with Gabon. The family is polygamous which makes the home crowded and busy, but she is isolated due to the circumstances of her birth:

“My mother got pregnant when she was nineteen and died while giving birth, her death brought about by witchcraft. From that moment I was declared a bastarda – a bastard daughter. I had been born before my father paid dowry in exchange for my mother. That’s why society looked at me with contempt and people called me ‘the daughter of an unmarried Fang woman’ or ‘the daughter of no man’.”

As an older teenager she is beginning to question the life mapped out for her and what she wants. She is keen to locate her father but this is absolutely forbidden by her grandfather Osá who lectures her on the history of the Fang people and her responsibilities:

“[My grandmother] told me to ask Osá if there were any women in our tribe since he had failed to mention any in his collection of heroes, but I didn’t obey.”

Okomo isn’t interested in her appearance or in marrying a man, running a home and having children, all of which are expected of her. She knows she may have an ally in her mother’s brother, the only person who has ever shown her any affection. But he is somewhat ostracised too:

“Uncle Marcelo was an isolated man who lived outside of society because he was a fam e mina or a ‘man-woman’ the men of the tribe accused him of this both in public and in private.”

While Okomo is trying to work all this out, she is drawn into the sphere of three older girls, and discovers her sexuality. She falls in love with Dina, who reciprocates her feelings. But in a small village, where same-sex relationships are taboo, theirs is a love with great risk attached to it.

La Bastarda is a tense narrative where the dangers for the girls and for Marcelo are made very clear. But it is also a story of first love, coming of age, self-discovery and the nurturing of chosen families. It addresses huge issues in such a short space without ever losing sight of the individual characters. A finely balanced story of defiance and resilience.