Stevie‘s review of Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Contemporary Multicultural Women’s Fiction published by Pamela Dorman Books 18 Jan 22
I’m generally a great fan of fiction about clashes between two cultures, particularly those that offer us a glimpse into an unfamiliar one, while also pushing us to examine our own more closely. In this case, we see the conflicts that face young British Nigerian women as they try to balance the expectations of their families with those of friends and workmates from different backgrounds. Yinka Oladeji is a success by the standards of the latter, with a high-powered job, a house of her own, and a busy social life, but something of a failure according to the former, since she is yet to marry or even find a boyfriend they consider to be suitable husband material. It all comes to a head at a party celebrating the pregnancy of Yinka’s married younger sister, when one of their cousins makes an announcement regarding her own upcoming wedding.
Yinka decides that she needs to find a boyfriend before the wedding, so she has a date to take with her, and draws up a project plan as to how she will accomplish this task. She is encouraged to try online dating by discovering that her favourite (and only unmarried) Aunty has been having a lot of success at meeting men through the site she’s been using. Her work plans are struck a blow, however, when rather than being given the promotion she has boasted about, she finds herself made redundant. Now, she has to find both a new boyfriend and a new job, all the while trying to maintain the illusion of continuing successes in front of her family.
While I liked Yinka’s pair of inseparable friends from her former workplace, I found most of her friends, and more especially her various potential suitors, to be rather bland and interchangeable. I wasn’t particularly impressed by her ex-boyfriend and his various reappearances in her life either, and I felt Yinka’s lying to her family about the non-existent promotion went on for far too long.
All in all, this was a pretty big disappointment, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to get around to reviewing the book. It avoided getting a lower grade, though, by giving good, if brief, representation to an asexual character.
Grade: C
Summary:
Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is “Yinka, where is your huzband?”
Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.
Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?
Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? is a fresh, uplifting story of an unconventional heroine who bravely asks the questions we all have about love. Wry, moving, irresistible, this is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think–and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours.
Read an excerpt.
