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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl with the Louding Voice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Education, Empowerment, and Self-Worth
Gender Inequality and Solidarity
Wealth, Poverty, and Choice
Survival
Summary
Analysis
That night, Adunni rises from her sleeping mat in the room she shares with her brothers and anxiously ponders what her future will hold. She can’t believe that Papa would sell her to an old man like Morufu without consulting her first, breaking the promise he made to Mama. The night sky is full of fireflies, and Adunni recalls how Mama told her that fireflies bring messages of good luck. Adunni was deeply affected by Mama’s death, but she has learned to keep her sorrow inside and stay strong for Kayus and Papa. Today’s news, however, tests her strength.
That Adunni shares a room with her brothers reaffirms the family’s poverty. The detail that Papa broke a promise to Adunni’s late mother presents a gender divide in the subject of marriage: mama didn’t want Adunni to be married off at a young age, but Papa is more amenable to the decision. Mama’s resistance to the idea of Adunni becoming a child bride positions her as Adunni’s protector and Papa as someone who doesn’t have her best interests at heart. Adunni’s strength as she grieves Mama’s death gives the reader a sense of her character: she is resilient and tenacious amid hardship.
Themes
Adunni closes her eyes as she continues to think about Mama, imagining her as a “rose flower.” Mama, who was only in her forties when she died, suffered for half a year with a horrible sickness that made her cough violently. Before she fell ill, Mama was full of energy, always busy frying puff-puffs to sell at the Ikati market. Mama saved the best puff-puffs to give to Iya, an old woman from the Agan village for whom Mama often made food, even as her sickness made her increasingly weak.
Adunni imagining Mama as a beautiful flower shows how she idealizes her mother. Mama’s determination to help Iya, despite the fact that she herself was so ill, introduces the importance of women’s solidarity with one another. Puff-puffs, the food Mama sold in the market, are a sweet fried dough, similar to American doughnuts.
Themes
Mama looked out for Adunni. She taught Adunni to pray to God and, two days before she died, made Papa promise not to marry her off and to continue her education. Tearfully, Adunni again envisions her mother as a “rose flower,” though this time the flower is “brown” and stamped on by “the dirty feets of a man that forgets the promise he make to his dead wife.”
Mama teaching Adunni to pray to God suggests that Mama is the person who showed Adunni how to be strong and hopeful when confronted with hardship. When Adunni changes her earlier depiction of Mama from a fresh rose to a brown, wilted rose, flattened by “the dirty feets of a man that forgets the promise he make to his dead wife,” she is referring to Papa’s decision to marry off Adunni in violation of his wife’s dying wish. Essentially, Adunni thinks that Papa is soiling Mama’s memory by breaking his promise to Mama and failing to keep Adunni safe.
Themes
