55 pages • 1 hour read
Chinelo OkparantaUnder the Udala Trees
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaCharacter Analysis
Ijeoma
Ijeoma is our first-person narrator who spends the novel coming to terms with her sexuality in an oppressive and war-torn country. She is Igbo—part of the losing faction of the Nigerian Civil War—and raised Christian. Repeatedly called beautiful by many characters, Ijeoma has “Yellow skin, the color of a ripe pawpaw” which is considered “very lucky for a girl” (54).
After a brief first relationship with Amina, a Hausa Muslim girl, Ijeoma suffers at the hands of her society’s homophobia. Her mother uses the Bible to try abusive gay conversion therapy, condemning gay and lesbian lives and shaming Ijeoma for her innate self. Soon, Ijeoma feels like her “mind was infested with images of graves. [She] had become a little like a coffin: [she] felt a hollowness in [her] and a rattling at [her] seams” (196).
Though she continues pursuing relationships with women, Ijeoma feels the weight of cultural and religious expectations as a horrific and unbearable burden until she decides to marry Chibundu, a childhood friend. On the night of their wedding, Ijeoma describes herself as “a snail protected by its hard shell [...] alarmed [...]” and “retreating into its shell” (234) when Chibundu tries to consummate their marriage. She eventually wills herself to have sex with him, despite a complete lack of desire or attraction.
Eventually, Ijeoma reconciles her Christian beliefs with her lesbianism. The key to her self-acceptance is in the idea that change is central to God’s plan; “the lesson of the Bible” is the “importance of [...] enough revision to do away with tired, old, even faulty laws” (321). At the end of the novel, she is finally happy in her long-term, but secret, relationship with Ndidi.
Adaora (Mama)
Ijeoma’s mother Adaora initially condemns gay and lesbian lives. When she first discovers her daughter’s attraction to women, Adaora tries her hand at Bible-driven gay conversion therapy. She then pushes Ijeoma to marry Chibundu in an attempt to forcibly create a heteronormative life for her.
However, during the novel, Adaora has a complete change of heart. After Ijeoma’s marriage fails, Adaora takes in her daughter and granddaughter. At that moment, she sees her daughter not just as a gay “abomination” but as a much more capable mother than she had been (Adaora had earlier left Ijeoma with another family for several years).
By the Epilogue, Adaora has begun using her religious faith to condemn not gay and lesbian lives, but violence against the LGBT+ community, praying “God forbid” such a thing (317). Adaora accepts Ijeoma as a lesbian in love with Ndidi, and mother and daughter have grown extremely close.
Chibundu
A childhood friend who grows into a “hard and manly” (232) “businessman” (231) with “muscles of his upper arms [that] threatened to burst open the seams” (212), Chibundu marries Ijeoma at Adaora’s behest. Chibundu stakes a claim on Ijeoma because they were childhood friends in Ojoto.
Chibundu’s hyper-masculinity is threatened when he finds the letters between Ijeoma and Ndidi. He acts “as if all the world, and especially me and Chidinma, had become like thorns on his skin” (266). He feels personally wronged by Ijeoma’s lesbianism because he has tried hard to be a good husband; “every once in a while he cooked, and even enjoyed doing so” (240).
Unlike Adaora, Chibundu never accepts Ijeoma’s queerness. He eventually accepts their divorce and never reveals that she is a lesbian, but when he hears the same news of hate crimes that Adaora does, he merely responds, “Well, that’s life” (318).
Amina
Amina is Ijeoma’s first love. They meet and date secretly as teens despite being from different ethnic groups on the opposite sides of the Nigerian Civil War: Amina is Hausa and speaks Arabic, while Ijeoma is Christian and Igbo.
After the grammar school teacher discovers Ijeoma and Amina having sex and sends them away to boarding school, Amina eaves Ijeoma and marries a Hausa man. Ijeoma feels betrayed by Amina’s actions. Amina has gone from being the instigator in their relationship, and from declaring that she and Ijeoma “might as well be married” (118) because of their love and desire for each other to telling Ijeoma about her heterosexual engagement under an udala tree.
Ndidi
Ndidi, Ijeoma’s second and lasting love, is the most “out” lesbian of the novel; she only hides as much as needed. When the women first get together, Ndidi shows Ijeoma the hidden Nigerian LGBT underground, with its gay clubs and infrequently available safe spaces. Ndidi wants to escape their oppressive society, decorating her apartment with “postcards of places she wanted to go” (185).
After several members of their circle are killed for their sexuality, Ijeoma parts from Ndidi in fear for her life and under pressure from Adaora. Nevertheless, even after marrying Chibundu, Ijeoma thinks about Ndidi and writes her passionate letters. The letters connect Ndidi to Amina: Not only do they look a little alike, but when Chibundu reveals that he has been stealing Ndidi’s answers to Ijeoma’s letters, Ijeoma “remember[s] how discarded the whole situation with Amina has left [her] feeling. It felt like the cruelest kind of déjà vu” (260).
The Epilogue tells us that Ndidi remained in love with Ijeoma and they wind up together in the end. Her complete love for Ijeoma marks their relationship as better than most heterosexual unions in the novel.
