AiW Guest: Karina M. Szczurek 

Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda was first published two years ago in its original Spanish by Feminist Press and has now become the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman writer to be translated into English. The book was banned in the author’s home country. More a novella than a novel, in seven short chapters, it tells the story of Okomo, the “motherless orphan”. Okomo’s mother died giving birth to her and she “was declared a bastarda – a bastard daughter.” Her father is absent for reasons no one is willing to explain to the teenage girl. Okomo is desperate to find her only remaining parent, but the Fang community she is part of closes ranks and is unwilling to lift the veil on the mystery of her father’s disappearance from her life.

Okomo grows up in the polygamous family of her late mother…