The second novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Cursed Daughters, foreshadows its own plot through its title, giving readers a clear expectation of the book’s central theme. The story revolves around the curse of a household—the Falodun family—a curse meant to plague only the daughters.
“Your daughters will pursue men, and lose their hold on them. Your descendants will suffer for man’s sake.”
This is the curse that haunts the family, one the culprit initially laughed off, as anyone would, but which soon proves to be no laughing matter.
The novel takes us through generations of Falodun women and the various ways they lost or suffered because of men.
At the top of this lineage is Feranmi Falodun, the great-grandmother and originator of the curse, who slept with another woman’s husband and brought damnation upon her descendants. Next is Bunmi Falodun, Mo’s mother, whose husband took another wife and eventually sent her and her children packing. Bunmi would go on to spend years, time, money, and effort, dabbling in charms and juju, desperately trying to get him back.
Then there is Kemi Falodun, Ebun’s mother, who endured a series of failed marriages,three, to be precise, before resigning herself to spinsterhood in the Falodun house, where she spent the rest of her days chasing men and the money they offered.
Monife (Mo) Falodun, one of the novel’s main characters, who believes she will be the one to break the curse after falling in love with Kalu, whom she nicknames Golden Boy. In the end, love becomes her undoing.
Ebun Falodun, another central character, never believes in the curse and has no interest in keeping a man. She lives much of the story as a spinster and later as a single mother.
Then there is Eniiyi Falodun, the reincarnated, or so it is believed, spitting image of Monife. Born on the same day as Mo’s death, Eniiyi shares an unsettling resemblance with her aunt, right down to scars and tattoos. Much of her story revolves around her struggle to live outside Mo’s shadow.
The novel also briefly mentions other women in the Falodun lineage—an Aunt Wemimo, an Aunt Teni, and another Aunt Supo—who all spent significant portions of their lives as spinsters in the Falodun mansion. Going through the series of stories of these women, it would be right for one not to dismiss these repeated misfortunes, generation after generation, as mere coincidence but rather to think the curse is, indeed, effective.
However, the character who intrigues me the most, and whom I find most disappointing, is Monife.
Mo’s introduction is compelling. We first meet her as a fierce, determined undergraduate who is bold enough to confront a fraudulent herbalist, Mamalawo(Mama G), who has been exploiting her mother. She resents the way her mother wastes time and money trying to reclaim a man who, despite the pain his absence causes her, Mo has made peace with the fact that he is never coming back.
When it comes to men, Mo initially treats them lightly. She admires her Aunt Kemi, who enjoys men without centering her life around one. Her relationships before Golden Boy are calm, casual, and free of desperation.
But after meeting Kalu, her ruin, Mo’s personality took an unfortunate turn.
She becomes everything she once despised; a woman seeking spiritual intervention to keep a man and from Mama G at that, someone she once considered a fraud, a woman who stooped so low as to become a mistress. I truly lost it when she became Kalu’s mistress.
It feels as though there are two different Mos in the novel: the Mo before Kalu and the Mo after. I like to believe the former would have despised the latter.
As for the Falodun family curse, I don’t believe it is real in a supernatural sense. Rather, I believe the women built their lives around the idea of the curse, allowing it to dictate their choices. Without its existence, the Falodun daughters might have lived very different, and possibly better, lives.
Take Mo, for instance. Without the pressure of “breaking the curse,” she might not have forced her relationship with Kalu to survive at all costs. She likely would have walked away the moment Ada entered the picture, leaving Kalu to make his own choice instead of pushing herself to extremes.
More than anything, I appreciate how this novel portrays the many ways women center their existence around men and seek meaning through male validation. This centralization manifests differently across characters: Bunmi, who never stopped chasing her husband regardless of the cost; Kemi, who pursued men endlessly without ever finding value outside them; Mo, who replicated her mother’s desperation with Golden Boy; and Ebun, who seemingly rejected this pattern by decentralizing men entirely and choosing single motherhood. However, I think her choice is not completely independent of the curse’s influence. Despite her disbelief in the curse, she is still unconsciously shaped by it. I believe that without the curse’s looming presence, she might have lived a beautiful life with Asquo.
Finally, I would like to end with Eniiyi, the character I am most pleased with. For one,I do not believe she is Mo’s reincarnation. I think she is simply her aunt’s spitting image—much like Zubby resembles his father. While the shared scars and tattoos are unsettling, I don’t think they confirm reincarnation.
What I love most about Eniiyi is her decision to choose a different path. She actively carves out a life away from the Falodun legacy, refusing to be defined by her aunt’s tragedy or the family curse. I hope the story of the curse ends with her, and I believe it will, because Eniiyi does not strike me as someone who would pass such a story down to her children. Without retelling it, without feeding it, the curse would finally lose its power.
Cursed Daughters is a beautiful novel that I truly enjoyed reading, and it has encouraged me to read Oyinkan’s debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer. What I find most compelling is how effortlessly Oyinkan balances humour and tragedy. Even as the women endure pain and losses, the novel never becomes too heavy to read, thanks to the humours inserted throughout the story.
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| Oyinkan Braithwaithe |
Ultimately, Cursed daughters reads less like a story about supernatural curse or reincarnation, and more of an exploration of how we shape our destinies through our actions. Rather than take accountability for the consequences of those actions, the characters and people in general would rather place the burden on external forces like fate or in the case of this book, a generational curse.
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