Daughters of Oduma is a Young Adult Fantasy novel written by Nigerian-American author Moses Ose Utomi. I really enjoyed Utomi's other 2023 new release - the adult fantasy novella "The Lies of the Ajungo". That enjoyment - along with a recommendation from one of my favorite reviewers, Alex Brown - led me to check out this novel, even though it seemed on first glance to be targeting a younger age group than I usually focus on. And I wasn't totally wrong about that - despite the novel being sold as "Young Adult" and featuring a main protagonist who is 17, the novel is perfectly appropriate for and easily could've been sold as middle grade. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but does also make it a bit more difficult for an adult to review it.
At the same time, Daughters of Oduma is pretty excellent with dealing with themes of family, of choosing who one wants to be, of fear of failure and how one tries to overcome that fear, and how people struggle with inner worries, demons, and fears they've chosen the wrong path. It's a novel that is inspired by West-African cultures featuring a world which is almost entirely sub 18 year old girls and boys in various castes and focuses upon a family of five girls who are in a caste of fighters/wrestlers, who need their champion to win the land's major competition to get the new members they need in order for the clan to survive. There are aspects of the setting that are never really explored and are teased as being potentially part of a sequel (where are the adults? Where do the new kids come from?), but overall the story works really well, with excellent characters and themes - it's also very body positive - that will be very relevant to a lot of younger readers.
More specifics after the jump:
Plot Summary:
Dirt is the Second of the Mud Fam, one of the families of Bowers on the Island who compete every year in the God Bow tournament. Bowers are the most prestigious of the four types of children who exist on the island, and their skill in Bowing - a fighting art made up of Slapping, Riding, and Trapping - makes them the highest of all...and the God Bow tournament every year reveals who is the best Bower there is. More importantly, the winner of the God Bow tournament every year draws in new recruits for their Fam...and the Mud Fam desperately needs those new recruits, as they are down to the minimum five members...and should they go below that number, the family would cease to exist.Daughters of Oduma presents a West-African inspired world of nearly all children under 17, with there being only one adult in the setting. How this is possible and what happens to the kids once they are "Scarred" and have to leave their society is a mystery in the setting (as is how new children are born), and this book teases answers to that mystery might come in a sequel and might involve godly interactions and actions, but doesn't bother to answer them here. So if the lack of such answers to these questions, or other questions about how this society can possibly function, may bother you - well Daughters of Oduma will not be for you.
Dirt once thought she might be the First in the Fam, the best Bower and leader of the Fam, but she never quite worked up to that level and is now out of shape and retired, serving as the Second to the Mud First Webba, and as the teacher to the three younger bowers in the Fam. She's old too - 16 years old - and knows that any day now she will show signs of "Scarring" and become a woman...and be forced to leave the Fam behind. If that was to happen, the Mud Fam would cease to exist and Dirt loves the Fam too much to let that happen.
But when Webba is injured by a dirty attack from the First of the Vine, Dirt is forced to compete in the ring for her Fam's survival, and Dirt knows that she just cannot measure up to even the mid-level Bowers in the tournament...even though she has to beat them. And with everyone in the Mud carrying some secret other desire for themselves, Dirt and the rest of them will need to figure out how to proceed fast or else it really will be the Fam's end...
If you can get past that, what you'll find is that Daughters of Oduma does contain is a story with some really strong themes and characters for younger readers in a setting that often prizes people who are not usually the center of such stories. Here we have a society where black fat girls are prized in Bower Society as having value, and being "Fat" is a compliment, not a negative (although one of the other castes features skinny girls instead). The top* caste seemingly is made up of girls who fight, while another caste of girls who create jewelry and crafts (known as "Adorn") is considered lower, contrary to traditional western gender roles. And the world features a quartet of gods in its mythology who are seemingly derived from some West African myth and a story in which much of the dialogue is in a pidgin rather than typical English, although this pidgin is rather easy to get used to. And so the story and setting contains aspects that many teens won't have seen before in traditional western middle-grade and YA and will speak to some of them especially well.
*Although we hear the value of the castes from a biased narrator so whether the hierarchy of the castes we are told about is actually real is disputable*
This is especially the case considering the themes we see through the various characters who form the center of this novel. In our main protagonist, Dirt, we see a girl who is desperate to protect and save her family but is so afraid of herself not being capable that her biggest weakness are the inner whispers causing her to doubt. In one of the other Mud Fam members, Nana, we have a girl who realizes she would rather not fight but would instead rather be a "Mosquito" girl - or as they call themselves, Butterfly girls - who creates adorn...even though she believes such a turn would be a betrayal of her Fam. In Swoo we have the girl who isn't old enough to officially compete, who is merely a NoBe rather than a Sis (the top tier of the Fam), but is incredibly seemingly jealous of how Dirt is allowed to compete and might be chosen by the gods when Swoo is a better bower. And in Carra Carre, the First of the antagonist Vine faction, we see a girl who is the most powerful one in her clan...but who lets others lead her out of insecurity and fear and lets herself do some pretty bad things as a result.
And so we wind up with a novel about conquering doubt, about the malleability of traditions when times change or those traditions don't make sense, and about figuring out who one wants to be and how a good Fam will respect those decisions rather than constrain a person into being something they don't want. And it's pretty good in hitting all these themes, with its excellent characters and setting, even if that setting is kind of incomplete. The result is an effective middle grade/young YA novel for those in grades 7-9.
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