Under the Udala Trees

“At the window, only one glass pane remained in its frame, and on it, cracks in an almost circular pattern, as if a spider web had been stretched across its surface. She went up to that pane, touched it, stroked its fissures with her fingers, stared accusingly at it.” 

The simile of the spider web develops this description of destruction caused by a raid. This window-web is significant because it is near Uzo’s corpse. Ijeoma’s father refusing to go into the bunker and thus engaging in a form of suicide is spider-like trickery.

“I was thinking of the ways in which I could dance or fast or pray this sadness away when Mama spoke.”

After Uzo’s death, Ijeoma wants to lift her mother’s spirits. Adaora has been neglecting Ijeoma and all her household duties. Ironically, right after Ijeoma thinks about how to cheer up her mother, Adaora announces that she is sending Ijeoma to live with the grammar school teacher; Ijeoma doesn’t get the chance to help her mother grieve.

“Pidgin was the language of amusement and relaxation, but it was also the language of conflict.” 

Several languages appear in Under the Udala Trees. Most characters code-switch from a native language, like Igbo, to English, a colonial language. Pidgin is only used for heightened situations: fun or anger.

“There was no one else around. The place felt extra holy: a hollow sort of holiness, the kind of hollowness that caused me to think of an echoing voice.” 

This solitary visit to church happens during Adaora’s attempt at gay conversion therapy. Ijeoma wants to talk to God without her mother’s voice in between them. Being alone in a sacred space allows Ijeoma to search her heart and mind about Amina.

“Before the war came, Papa told candlelight stories, folktales about talking animal and old kingdoms. In his nighttime voice, gruff from hours of silence at his drawing table, he told of kings and queens, of magic drums, of scheming tortoises and hares.” 

Ijeoma passes down her father’s stories to her daughter Chidinma. Each story element connects to a memory of Uzo that Ijeoma treasures: The kings and queens connect to the castle that Uzo architecturally drafted, the magic drums connect to masquerade dancers, and the animal stories are how Uzo taught Ijeoma the concept of allegory. 

“Just because the Bible recorded one specific thread of events, one specific history, why did that have to invalidate or discredit all other threads, all other histories?” 

Ijeoma struggles with the Old Testament’s intolerance towards gay and lesbian lives. This passage is about Adam and Eve; Ijeoma imagines that there could be another thread about Eve being paired with another woman. 

“I promise it didn’t feel as good as with you.”

Ijeoma reassures Amina that kissing Chibundu felt worse than kissing Amina. Ijeoma’s body reacts differently to men and women. 

“Because it was primarily an Igbo school, it was also a Christian school, and because it was a Christian school, all of the students were required to go to Sunday services.” 

In the “Author’s Note,” Okparanta writes, “Nigeria ranks as the second-most-religious country” in the 2012 Win-Gallup International Global Index of Religion and Atheism (325). The above quote is an example of that religiosity: There is no division of church and state (in this case, school). Christianity is mandatory for Igbo institutions. 

“Humans double-deal. If it is true that we are made in his image, then does God double-deal?”

During a church revival where a white minister hears Amina’s prayer right after Ijeoma’s prayer, Ijeoma guesses that they are praying for different things and wonders whose prayer God will answer. Ijeoma’s rational approach to religion will allow her to eventually reconcile her version of Christianity with her lesbianism.

“Her skin was darker, something between the color of a brown carton and the color of Guinness.” 

Ndidi’s skin is darker than Ijeoma’s “yellow skin” (54), and is an addictive substance, something almost alcoholic. Ijeoma finds dark skin beautiful.  

“I’d never had wine before. [...] A little acidic, the way I imagined the color brown to taste, or ground-up bark from a tree mixed with perfume.”

Ndidi gives Ijeoma a drink that looks like Ndidi’s brown skin and reimagines the heteronormative udala tree as a symbol of long-lasting romantic love that is free from homophobic mores. 

“A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave.” 

Ijeoma dreams of her mother’s voice condemning her for being with Ndidi. This is one of many moments where Ijeoma’s sexuality is considered a kind of possession. Despite being happy in her new relationship, Ijeoma cannot shake her mother’s and society’s views. 

“The air was humid from the heat of cooking, but the sweet scent of the plantains infused the heat with a gentle perfume.” 

The motif of food—here, plantains—bookends the first part of Ijeoma and Ndidi’s relationship: Ijeoma is eating roasted plantains when she first meets Ndidi (177); Ndidi is cooking plantains when she suggests Ijeoma go on a date with Chibundu.

“I acknowledge to myself that sometimes I am a snail. I love myself by gliding. I contract my muscles and produce a slime of tears. Sometimes you see the tears and sometimes you don’t. It is my tears that allow me to glide. I glide slowly. But, slowly, I glide. It is a while before I am gone.” 

Ijeoma uses this snail metaphor to describe how she feels about her forced heterosexuality. She is unhappy to pretend to love a man and force herself to have undesired sex, but these are the only socially acceptable ways of “glid[ing]” through life. 

“But I knew that happiness was a word like madness, like sickness, like confusion, like loss, like death. Even like beautiful or pure or angelic or God. Happiness was a word that represented some deeper, inexplicable, heavy idea, the kind of idea that goes back and forth between two different worlds.” 

For Ijeoma, during her marriage, happiness feels distant, huge, and unattainable—like divine grace, only bestowed at God’s pleasure rather than obtained through one’s actions. Eventually, Adaora will recognize that Ijeoma is depressed. 

“By then there was the slight, sandy scent of snails in the air.” 

Building on the snail metaphor in the previous chapter, Ijeoma cooks snails while Chibundu decides that a child will save their marriage. Ijeoma had previously tried to tell Chibundu that she was a lesbian, but he wouldn’t listen. Here, her sexuality remains shelled, but she thinks a baby might make her life more bearable.

“I knocked over the mixture of peppers and onions and tomatoes, pinkish-red sauce scattering across the kitchen floor.” 

The motif of food appears when Ijeoma goes into labor with Chidinma while cooking a stew. Spilling “pinkish-red” sauce on the kitchen floor foreshadows her later bloody miscarriage. Much of Ijeoma’s life is spent in one kitchen or another, and this space is linked to motherhood as well as losing a child. 

“Masquerades—colorful ojuju dancers dancing to the beat of their metal ogene bells. Ojuju dancers dancing to the beat of clay udu drums, soft bass sounds forming the music that guided their steps.” 

Ijeoma’s marriage is a masquerade—she wears a mask of straightness. However, she isn’t filled with the joy of the ojuju dancers. Her dance is one of safety, avoiding the violence that Nigerians enact on members of the LGBT+ community.

“The harmattan had arrived, and in the distance a dense swirl of dust hung like clouds descended upon the earth [...] The machete’s blade glowed, even in the dim harmattan sun.”

The harmattan wind is a cyclical phenomenon here placed against the shining phallic symbol of the machete. The darkness of the wind echoes the darkness of Chibundu threatening Ijeoma. 

“My words get lost in all of that ruckus, my sweet, consoling words becoming like sugar in the rain, like ghosts, like the sheerest of cobwebs: melted, vanishing, imperceptible thin. Useless words, lost words, words as good as if they were never spoken at all.” 

Ijeoma has a recurring dream about Amina. Not only were the women raised speaking different languages—Igbo and Arabic—they also choose different paths and can’t use words to sway the other. In the end, Ijeoma chooses a female partner, while Amina stays with her Hausa husband. An example of one of Okparanta’s catalogues, words are compared to sugar, ghosts, and cobwebs.

“Though it is true, too, that sometimes it is hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs.” 

Under the Udala Trees is filled with tragedy: war and hate crimes against members of the LGBT community. Chibundu tries to make himself a victim, while Ijeoma has truly suffered. 

“It turned out to be an underwhelming kind of revelation, almost a nonrevelation, because unbeknownst to me, the girl already knew. And somehow it didn’t matter to her.” 

 Ijeoma comes out to her daughter in what turns out to be a formality—Chidinma “already” knows. Unlike Adaora, whose entire character arc is learning to accept Ijeoma’s queerness, Ijeoma’s daughter accepts her without hesitation. This spans generations of women, with tolerance growing in each subsequent generation. 

“How is it that this town can be so many places at once? [...] All of them are here in Nigeria. You see, this place will be all of Nigeria.”

Ijeoma and Ndidi’s pillow talk includes imagining a place where LGBT+ folks are accepted. Ndidi offers a variety of potential locations, wishing safety for everywhere and everyone. This passage touches on ideas of utopia: An ideal world that does not (yet) exist.