It is a known fact that women’s lives, stories and perspectives are often under-documented or documented wrongly if at all.
This is such that on the African continent, people assume that feminism is a Western concept simply because there isn’t enough documentation of the women who resisted male domination from an anti colonialist perspective.
Even more, more African women tend to draw feminist inspiration first from women not in their families as opposed to getting feminist values from the women in their family trees. And this is not for lack of feminist minded women in their families.
But what if women had a chance to document and make films of the women in their families? What would that look like and how?
To answer these questions, Urban Woman Magazine asked some women to share the female family member they would make films of and why.
Read their responses below.
Tee
It would be about my mother. She’s late though and she died when I was about 8. So there are so many things I wish I could have known about her.
Why I would want a film about her is because I think her life and our family dynamics would make such a great movie.
She was very brilliant but instead of furthering her education, she decided she wanted to be married. Got with a man, had two kids and was abandoned by him.
She moved on, married her second husband and had 3 kids with him, but this man treated her first two so badly my mum couldn’t take it. She lost her first child in that marriage and her second was treated differently by the father of the other three. Refused to sponsor his education and physically assaulted him ( till this day my brother has a mark on his lap that this man burnt him with a very hot iron).
For her child’s sake my mother left the marriage again and then she met my father, he paid her bride price but they didn’t do a marriage ceremony and they only had me. I don’t know the reason she left my father but I didn’t grow up with him until she died.
I can’t lie Funke Akindele’s movie “A Tribe Called Judah” made me cry so much because I saw my mother in Jedidiah. Raising 5 children (four boys and me a girl) alone until she got seriously ill and didn’t make it.
I know she got shamed a lot especially by her family for having married three men and ending up single raising her kids alone but I’m proud of her for not remaining in toxic situations—for having the courage to leave.
Might I add my mother was a hustler, she moved away from home and hustled her ass out in a new town. She was able to build a house in Abuja despite carrying all that burden. I feel so proud of her and I wish her life can be made into a movie or a book.
Dee
Me because I no small.
Jo
If I make a movie about a woman in my family I’d pick my aunty O. She was the first person to tell me the true realities of women in Nigeria and how to center myself especially in my career. She told me that however much I feel like a second class citizen now, it will only intensify greatly even if I’m already a doctor.
My parents isolated me a lot. I saw it then as them trying to make me safe but after that trip to my Aunt’s place in Abuja, a lot changed for me.
She asked me what I wanted to do when I finished Medical School. I told her I wanted to come back to Nigeria and work for my dad and she laughed.
She said: “I’m telling you this as a woman and not as your aunty. Better be the best so that your daddy will be flying you in to treat a specialty of his.”
Because to her, if I came back my life would be rubbish for real and I would spend all my time working for an inheritance that my name will never be on.
She pointed out that I’d marry and that’s the more reason my dad would want to leave it in the name of his legacy.
That changed my mindset in a way I can’t describe.
Noshina
If I had the opportunity to make a film about a woman in my family it would be about my mum. My life has improved positively because I somehow use her milestones as a measure to tell myself I can do anything.
That woman just bagged her PhD, runs a successful catering company, runs several women’s associations, takes good care of herself, and is overall a kind person. My mum inspires me to not be an ordinary person, she is an embodiment of grace and I want to tap from that as much as I can.
Love
That would be my Great-grandmother, my father’s grandmother.
She had died before I was born and even till this day people of my village still talk about her. She was a woman that men would tell stories of to their sons and daughters.
According to the stories, she was a force in her time, a time when women were nothing but wives who were beaten and cheated on by their husbands, this woman owned lands and houses. Her merchandise was known across several villages. They said she was fierce, nobody could stand her, not even the men. People mentioned her name to get out of trouble. When she spoke, everyone listens, men dared not question her when she is on to something.
She felt like a fictional warrior to me when I was told these stories in my childhood.
She faced a lot of challenges, especially with motherhood (that’s a whole story on its own) but she fought in the midst of it all.
She inspires me a lot to be strong and tenacious. I really wish I met her even though that logically impossible.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.