Editorial Content for Cursed Daughters

Following the 2018 release of her smash hit, MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER, Oyinkan Braithwaite returns with CURSED DAUGHTERS, a heady mix of superstition and reality set in glittering Lagos, Nigeria.

“Your daughters are cursed --- they will pursue men, but the men will be like water in their palms.” So begins the curse laid upon Feranmi Falodun, a spectacular beauty who fell in love with a married man and faced his wife’s wrath. For generations, the curse has held true. The Falodun women are able to find, fall for and entrance the handsome, ambitious and well-connected men they meet, and even birth their children, but they can never keep a man in their home. On the day we meet them, they have just buried Monife, daughter of Bunmi, niece of Kemi and cousin of Ebun. A lovelorn beauty, Monife drowned herself in Lagos’s filthiest waters, her heart broken by the curse.

But the day brings a second, perhaps even more momentous occasion: Ebun, pregnant by an unnamed and uninvolved man, gives birth to her daughter five months early --- and she looks exactly like Monife. Though she can barely hold her eyes open or consider the family she has been born into, Eniiyi has been burdened with not just the family curse, but their belief that she may be her reincarnated cousin. To Monife’s mother, Bunmi, Eniiyi seems like a second chance to save her daughter; to her own mother, Ebun, Eniiyi is an opportunity to break free from the curse forever. But neither of them can deny their shared fear that Eniiyi will be both and neither --- a specter meant to follow in her cousin’s footsteps, right down to her tragic end.

"Equal parts bitingly funny, searingly perceptive and unabashedly magical, CURSED DAUGHTERS is a riveting, epic-in-scope novel from an ambitious but assured writer who can more than hold her own, even when juggling nonlinear timelines and generations of independent women."

This is the dynamic in which Eniiyi grows up. Monife’s room is held as a shrine to her even decades later, and three generations of heartbroken women reside in the same compound that has held generations of heartbroken women in each of its rooms before them. Yet the Falodun women keep trying. Bunmi, desperate to reunite with her ex-husband, visits a local juju woman weekly, spending the little money she has on various herbs and spells meant to draw his eye away from his current wife. Kemi, her belly still flat and breasts pert even in her 40s and 50s, chases down married men in hopes of finding a loose heart or wallet willing to support her. Ebun, who has always played it cool with the opposite sex, still withholds the identity of Eniiyi’s father as she pushes her to achieve more. All of them, including Eniiyi herself, continue to wonder and dream about the supposed curse on their bloodline, and how it has enabled and prevented them from growing into happy, independent women.

But a curse is more than a single story. It is repeated time again, with details added or excluded as necessary, and each generation seems to take something new from it. Alternating between the perspectives of Monife, Ebun and Eniiyi, Oyinkan Braithwaite covers the girlhoods of Monife and Ebun; their adolescence, as Monife falls for a “Golden Boy” who is forbidden from being with her; and, finally, Eniiyi’s own young adulthood as, for the first time ever, she finds a boy for whom it may be worth tempting the curse.

At this point, Eniyii is in her 20s, already in possession of a bachelor’s and a master’s, and in search of work as a genetic counselor, someone who can help a family identify warning signs and alerts in their genes and make decisions about the future. Though she has always scoffed at the story of the curse (burdened, as she is, with already supposedly being her reincarnated cousin), Eniiyi’s career path seems to be a silent but resolute confirmation of her fear of the curse.

But whereas her mother and grandmothers have fallen victim to old-world superstitions and potions, Eniiyi considers herself a woman of science who knows that curses aren’t real. Still, she can’t shake the ever-present feeling that Monife is watching her, visiting her, leading her to --- or from --- her fate. When she saves a young man from drowning on the very beach where her cousin perished and starts falling for him, Eniiyi’s dreams about Monife take on a fiery, candescent edge.

Thanks to Braithwaite’s alternating perspectives, readers can quickly and easily see the striking similarities between Eniiyi’s beloved, Zubby, and Monife’s “Golden Boy,” lending credence to the fear that she is doomed to repeat Monife’s fate. Still, combing her science background for some better explanation, Eniiyi must wonder: What if the trauma of losing the love, stability and social standing that came with marriage had left epigenetic markers on generation after generation of the Falodun women? What if, in other words, the curse is something the women have laid upon and perpetuated themselves?

Equal parts bitingly funny, searingly perceptive and unabashedly magical, CURSED DAUGHTERS is a riveting, epic-in-scope novel from an ambitious but assured writer who can more than hold her own, even when juggling nonlinear timelines and generations of independent women. At the heart of the book lie two mysteries --- is the curse real, and is Eniiyi really the reincarnation of Monife? --- and Braithwaite employs both the realities of life in Nigeria and the magical realism of its older, more superstitious residents to bring readers closer to the answer. All the while, Eniiyi’s fate lies in the balance, with the increasingly eerie similarities between her and her deceased cousin giving the narrative a propulsive, race-to-the-finish edge.

Whereas MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER was pure, gritty realism, Braithwaite proves here that she is just as comfortable writing magical realism into Lagos’ glittery, dark-cornered streets. The resulting juxtaposition of grit and fantasy makes the book feel grounded in something much larger and more eternal than itself. At the same time, she plays with the wicked classism of Lagos, poking fun at its idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, and examines something even more poignant: the repeated trauma of loss and abandonment. Whether genetics or curse, it is clear that something insidious follows the Falodun women. In Braithwaite’s deft hands, the mystery becomes a lesson in living, in making the most of what you have, and of separating your wants from those of your family’s.

Surprisingly bighearted and tender, CURSED DAUGHTERS solidifies Braithwaite’s place in the literary scene. Whether this magnificent author is revealing the murderous tendencies of a sister or forcing her protagonist to contend with a life that is not her own, she will always find the kernel of universal truth at the heart of every plotline, the big reveal that makes you think you’ve lived right alongside her unforgettable characters.