"No Man Will Call Your House a Home" Curse and reincarnation in Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters
Main Article Content
Abstract
Oyinkan Braithwaite's Cursed Daughters (2025) occupies a powerful space where the supernatural meets everyday life, blending curse and reincarnation to explore the experiences of women in Nigerian society. Using Yoruba cosmological thought and womanist criticism as complementary frameworks, this study examines how Braithwaite uses these metaphysical elements not merely as plot devices but as narrative tools that expose the recurring cycles of female suffering, domestic confinement, and generational trauma. Through sustained close reading, the study argues that the cursed daughters are not simply victims of fate; they serve as voices through which the novel critiques patriarchal systems, cultural silence, and the inherited burdens women carry across generations. The analysis shows that the curse, though spiritually coherent within Yoruba cosmology, is rooted in a patriarchal structure that pits women against one another while men remain unaccountable and that reincarnation functions not as liberation but as evidence that inherited suffering persists until its social causes are confronted. The study concludes that Cursed Daughters operates simultaneously as a literary haunting and a social critique, using the supernatural as a language capable of voicing what patriarchal silence has long suppressed, and it offers one of the first sustained academic readings of the novel.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-NC-SA) license.
You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
How to Cite
References
Achebe, C. (1975). Morning yet on creation day: Essays. London, England: Heinemann.
Adichie, C. N. (2003). Purple hibiscus. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.
Adjarho, E. E. (2025, November). Oyinkan Braithwaite's Cursed Daughters: A haunting meditation on belief, fate, and inherited suffering. Afrocritik. https://afrocritik.com
Awolalu, J. O. (1979). Yoruba beliefs and sacrificial rites. Harlow, England: Longman.
Ben-Daniels, F. (2022). Discussing the subject matter of the supernatural in African literature: Old and new. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.58256/hjlcs.v4i2.881
Boehmer, E. (2005). Colonial and postcolonial literature: Migrant metaphors (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Braithwaite, O. (2018). My sister, the serial killer. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Braithwaite, O. (2025a, November 11). "I am drawn to the uncanny": Oyinkan Braithwaite on Cursed Daughters [Interview by Chicago Review of Books]. https://chireviewofbooks.com/2025/11/11/i-am-drawn-to-the-uncanny-oyinkan-braithwaite-on-cursed-daughters/
Braithwaite, O. (2025b, November 2). Oyinkan Braithwaite discusses her novel Cursed Daughters [Interview by A. Rascoe]. NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/02/nx-s1-5398041/oyinkan-braithwaite-discusses-her-novel-cursed-daughters
Braithwaite, O. (2025c). Cursed daughters. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Clark, J. P. (1965). Abiku. In A reed in the tide (p. 4). Harlow, England: Longmans.
Gikandi, S. (Ed.). (2003). Encyclopedia of African literature. London, England: Routledge.
Jeyifo, B. (2004). Wole Soyinka: Politics, poetics and postcolonialism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Nwapa, F. (1966). Efuru. London, England: Heinemann.
Ogunyemi, C. O. (1985). Womanism: The dynamics of the contemporary Black female novel in English. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 11(1), 63–80.
Okpewho, I. (1983). Myth in Africa: A study of its aesthetic and cultural relevance. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Okri, B. (1991). The famished road. London, England: Jonathan Cape.
Quayson, A. (1997). Strategic transformations in Nigerian writing: Orality and history in the work of Rev. Samuel Johnson, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Silcox, B. (2025, October 31). [Review of the novel Cursed daughters, by O. Braithwaite]. Times Literary Supplement. https://www.the-tls.com/literature/fiction/cursed-daughters-oyinkan-braithwaite-book-review-beejay-silcox
Soyinka, W. (1967). Abiku. In Idanre and other poems (pp. 28–30). London, England: Methuen.
Soyinka, W. (1976). Myth, literature and the African world. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Stratton, F. (1994). Contemporary African literature and the politics of gender. London, England: Routledge.