The Stolen Daughter
In 1848 in Yoruba Kingdom (present-day Nigeria), fourteen-year-old Ṣìkẹ́mi lives peacefully in a village, gathering wood and edibles and helping her loving parents. One night, their hamlet is raided by slave hunters. She is kidnapped by female warriors and taken to a seaport. While fortunate enough not to be shipped off to America, she is purchased by Madam Tinúbú, a former queen consort, and a wealthy slave trader. Ṣìkẹ́mi toils at Madam’s palace near Lagos, longing to see her family again and dreaming of her little brother’s laughter. She realizes that a way to endure her inhumane existence would be to serve her owner meticulously. Luckily, after some good deeds and discovering a plot against her mistress, Madam venerates her and offers her preferment. Ṣìkẹ́mi is in a quandary: whether to join a brutal slave trader and perhaps see her family again, or put her and her family’s life at a larger risk.
Florence Ọlájídé’s afterword mentions that in 2020, she discovered a progenitor who was a slave during the Yoruba Civil Wars (1789-1893). She also learned more about African slave traders, particularly two prominent women who were complicit in the transatlantic trade. Ọlájídé developed this fictional story based on the lives of those real people. It is a unique and informative novel that covers the appalling lives of Africans enslaved in their own country by their people. It’s interesting to learn that they were also employed in hunting and kidnapping other Africans for profitable sale to Europeans, and some of those slave hunters were African women. Ọlájídé has covered evocatively not only the flora and fauna and the lives of West Africans during that period but also the political turmoil and tribal warfare. The British efforts in abolishing slavery and colonizing that region are subtly woven into the plot. Highly recommended.
