I read Patchwork in four days, and I realized I missed reading African women. Their narrative tends to be flawless and despite opening many story threads, they come back full circle. Or, at least, this has been my experience. The novel starts with a prologue introducing Pumpkin, the main character, with two birth certificates; one that states who her father is (tata) and one that does not. Followed by a very aggressive scene with her grandmother threatening to emasculate tata. This brief beginning foreshadows how her relationship with her father, and her mother’s relationship with him, will be central to the story, but also how it is a complicated one.

It then follows Pumpkin growing up with her mother on Tudu Court. surrounded by friends from the neighborhood. Pumpkin always talks about her father and the gifts he gives her and her mother, but her friends always point out how he is never there. Her mother, to me, a very weak character, resorts to drinking while trying to deal with tata‘s absence and indifference. One day, tata arrives unexpected and Pumpkin is forced to go live with him and his other family. This is where she realizes how deeply his father believes that money can buy and heal relationships, when in reality she is miserable.

As time goes by, Banda-Aaku starts a second part of the novel and narrates the political frictions in Zambia and Northern Rhodesia through Pumpkin’s life, now an adult woman with children.Tata‘s power with his employees, with his driver, with his women, and finally with Pumpkin herself further show how power shapes society, but also how her childhood impacted her adulthood. I think the most interesting aspect of this novel is that Pumpkin is not likeable, neither as a child nor as a adult, and yet, as a reader, I wanted to know what she would do next. How she would act out of impulse and not out of reason, and most ingeniously, how she almost always got away with it — not without her father’s unconditional support.