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On Black Sisters Street (2008)

by Chika Unigwe

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22413120,136 (3.4)38
Working as prostitutes in Antwerp's red-light district, four African women are shattered by the murder of one of their number and are brought closer together by the personal histories that they previously hid from one another.
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» See also 38 mentions

English (12)  Dutch (1)  All languages (13)
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https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/on-black-sisters-street-by-chika-unigwe/

A 2009 novel set in Belgium, about four women who have been trafficked from Nigeria for sex work in Antwerp (on Zwartzusterstraat, though in the novel the street name gets an extra ‘e’). Their back stories in Nigeria (and in one case Southern Sudan, as it then was) are well depicted, but the Antwerp sections are inconsistent, sometimes tightly described, but particularly towards the denouement at the end (which is signalled from the beginning) rather under-written in places. It’s important to give the victims of human trafficking their voices, and the novel asks and answers important questions, but I was a bit frustrated by the inconsistencies of structure and style. ( )
  nwhyte | Jan 21, 2023 |
This took so long to get started and as we got to know the women, it definitely warmed up, but the way the novel was set up was kind of clunky and felt more like a data dump than a story. Part of me thinks that Unigwe could have done better doing a "[b:The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria|28427125|The Morning They Came for Us Dispatches from Syria|Janine Di Giovanni|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451694930s/28427125.jpg|48535308]"-style bit of journalism. Now, given the danger of doing that, it might have been better to do fiction, but I think these stories work better in a creative non-fiction format. ( )
1 vote jeninmotion | Sep 27, 2018 |
A well written book with very strong stories about loss, self respect, sisterhood and (broken) dreams! ( )
  therska | Apr 22, 2018 |
Four African women have been lured to Europe to work in the sex trade. Each has had a traumatic childhood and the promise of a better life has led them to accept becoming prostitutes. When one is killed, the other three bond and reveal their real life stories. The difficult subject matter is dealt with in a rather straightforward, almost journalistic, manner. ( )
  seeword | Apr 26, 2017 |
Brilliantly crafted novel; four African women and their madam live together and work in Antwerp's Red Light district. When one of them is killed early on, the others begin to bond, sharing their very different life experiences that caused them to end up here. The author deftly interweaves the present day with their histories- including that of the dead woman.
Fascinating and moving read. ( )
  starbox | Jul 9, 2016 |
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In fact, big dreams are why the women decide to work in the sex trade in exchange for passage to Europe, which they view as a paradise of opportunity and riches, far removed from the crushing squalor and bleak opportunities in Africa. The question of what makes a victim is very much at the core of this chilling piece of fiction. And the women — Sisi, Ama, Joyce and Efe — refuse to characterize themselves as such, no matter how tragic the circumstances that pushed them to choose life as prostitutes.
 
Unigwe conveys both what is miraculous about the West to foreign eyes and what is awful — how people live and die alone, unmourned, without the sustenance of family and neighbors. And she shows us how the women who survive their pact with Dele choose to deploy their hard-won wealth. While Efe stays put, running her own brothel, Joyce and Ama prefer to build their businesses back home.

Despite the horrors it depicts, “On Black Sisters Street” is also boiling with a sly, generous humor. Unigwe is as adept at conveying the cacophony of a Nigerian bus as she is at suggesting the larger historical events that propel her characters. “On Black Sisters Street” marks the arrival of a latter-day Thackeray, an Afro-Belgian writer who probes with passion, grace and comic verve the underbelly of our globalized new world economy.
 

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Epigraph
Armed with a vagina and the will to survive, she knew that destitution would never lay claim to her.

-----Brian Chikwava, Seventh Street Alchemy
Dedication
To Jan and our four sons:
for their incredible capacity
to tolerate my moods

To the ABC Triumverates--
Arac de Nyeko, Monica; Batanda Budesta,
Jackee; and Chikwava, Brian--
for being there from A to Z
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The world was exactly as it should be.
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Working as prostitutes in Antwerp's red-light district, four African women are shattered by the murder of one of their number and are brought closer together by the personal histories that they previously hid from one another.

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On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.

Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true—if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else—they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week’s wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future.

Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe’s hidden photograph, Ama’s lifelong search for a father, Joyce’s true name, and Sisi’s deepest secrets—-and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a handsome, sinister stranger.
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