By DeMoat Hub Nigeria
Book Title: Surviving Domestic Violence (My Story)
Author: Oduware Asemota
Publisher: Real Choice Consults, Nigeria
Date of Publication: 2024
Reviewer: DeMoat Hub Nigeria
Number of Pages: 120
Very recent studies conducted around the area of Domestic Violence by the World Health Organization, WHO, say that worldwide, ‘over a quarter of women aged 15–49 years who have been in a relationship have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner at least once in their lifetime (since age 15).
But apart from official studies and fancy numbers on the websites of national and international organizations, there appear to be no one attempt made by individuals who have faced domestic violence in real time and under any circumstances, to bring these issues into sharper focus than what has been done with Surviving Domestic Violence (My Story), a 120-page book written by Oduware Asemota, a lawyer.
Contemporary literary assumptions indicate that personal stories told from the first-person narrative technique, (the I) are often good stories. There are two reasons why this assumption is tenable and widely acceptable to literary aficionados: one, with the first-person narrative technique, authors and narrators are at home and can easily explore the Freudian id, ego and the superego. The technique also forces readers to examine existentialist notions of the complexities and absurdities of life. Second, these personal stories are not ‘just’ fiction, nor faction – they are actual accounts of real life experiences that give readers an opportunity to come face to face with the realities that have confronted survivors of domestic violence and abuse.
Instead of just telling the story in a linear progression as most accomplished narrators are wont to, this story of domestic abuse begins at the ‘medias res’, in the middle of things. If Oduware’s was a purely fictional rendition, literary bugs would have expected to see either a stream of consciousness narration, or flashback of reminiscences that teleport the reader to the beginning of things. In the book however, the narrator seems to want to prepare the minds of her audience to the underlying issues of domestic violence, as if to say that without a proper understanding of the term, the story may just pass off as one of those stories. Therefore in Chapters One (Domestic Violence in Brief), the authors identifies the ‘signs’ of domestic violence, in Chapter 2, she discusses the ‘complexities of domestic violence to include recurrence of abuse, threats and fears, the impact of religion and culture in perpetuating and promoting domestic abuse, and uses Chapter 3 to highlight the impact of domestic abuse on the health and well-being of victims of domestic abuse to include post-traumatic stress disorders, PSD, low self-esteem, and the impact that domestic abuse has on children and the victims thereof.
The kernel plot of the Surviving Domestic Violence – My Story (both as the title of the book and as one of the issues that women and girls face in contemporary Nigeria) is weaved around the universal concepts of conflict – conflict being the eternal struggle between two opposing forces – darkness and light, coming and going, and that that exists between centrifugal and centripetal pushes and pulls of everyday existence. In this extant case of the narrator, the conflict started from a marriage that was supposed to have been made in heaven – in a church. However, the account as presented by the narrator in Chapter 4 – ‘My Personal Experience’, easily exposed the conspiracy that cultural and religious precepts subject women and girls, and which exposes them to domestic abuse in a society dominated by paternalistic values. It is in Chapter four that the story is narrated in the classical or traditional style of storytelling, the linear style. In it, readers will encounter the regular tale of man-meet-woman-in-church-and-get-married. The tragedy however is that the heroine of the story, in this case the narrator of the story did not live happily ever after with her husband the villain of the story who beat the living daylights out of her at the slightest provocation and brutalized his wife even when she was heavily pregnant and, on the verge of putting to bed. Chapters 5,6,7 and 8 render admonitions on seeking help and support, healing and rebuilding, self-care and empowerment strategies and a treatise on renewed hope for destiny fulfillment.
Areas where readers are going to grapple with, and not find answers include the following: how did the narrator get out of the domestic violence scenario? What eventually happened to the villain, aka her husband? After his arrest and detention by the authorities, what happened thereafter? Who has custody of their children? How was the marriage dissolved, and how did she and her children cope with the separation?
My Story has a unique style. Written in simple and straightforward English without the nuances of the academia, it is a book that any avid reader can put away in two to three hours. Ironically as well, it has the making of an academic document especially with the bullet points and itemized guidance notes on all the pages apart from Chapter 4.
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Image: Jason Leung Unsplash cropped
