Boy is for boy, p is for problem

By Daniel Nelson

Amaka has a good marriage, a seven-year-old daughter, but no son. And that’s a problem, especially for mother-in-law.

Excitement rises when Amaka gets pregnant. It’s a boy! But hopes are dashed with the

 subsequent miscarriage and mother-in-law’s pressure for a second wife to ensure a male heir. Amaka’s response: tell no-one about the loss of the baby and the diagnosis of future sterility. Instead, she hatches a plan to find a baby that she can pass off as her own.

The scene is set for a moving tale of desperate hopes and crushing disappointments, of furtive concealment and whispered rumours, and of still powerful expectations of male lines and women’s roles.

There are a couple of weaknesses in the plot, and the film starts slowly and is runs over the standard 90 minutes, but overall this is a success, particularly for Uche Nwadili as the would-be mum and Nigeria-born, British educated director Chika Anadu.

It’s also a lesson in the persistent power of patriarchy buttressed by matriarchy.

As if to prove how powerful is the drive to preserve the male line, B Is For Boy is released at about the same time as Mother of George, beautifully shot film about a Yoruba woman living in New York who is under pressure to have a boychild. Look out for screenings: it’s less melodramatic than its counterpart: instead of a hatful of plot twists it has one, but it’s a big one that packs a punch. Similarly, Half A Yellow Sun, based on the novel about two couples who get caught up in Nigeria’s civil war of the 1960s, has a mother-in-law determined that her son will in turn have his own male son and a modern daughter-in-law squeezed into a compromise in order to preserve her relationship.

Many Western audiences will be uneasy, dumbfounded or shocked by some of the attitudes in these films, but it’s good to be reminded that not all values are shared.

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