Where Women Are Kings: A Novel - Softcover

Christie Watson is a British novelist and pediatric nurse. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she won the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Bursary, and has since published short fiction and other writings in numerous publications including Wasafiri, Mslexia, Index on Censorship, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. Watson teaches creative writing at various institutions including Birkbeck University, the Groucho Club, and Cambridge University. She has won the Costa First Novel Award and Waverton Good Read Award for her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, and was named one of Red’s Hot Women of the Year in 2012. She lives in London.
 

Elijah, my lovely son, my beloved,
           
I want to tell you your life. Everyone has a story inside them, which begins before they are born, and yours is a bigger story than most will ever know. They say I shouldn’t tell you some things, and that words can hurt little ears, but, son of mine, there are no secrets between a mother and son. A child has seen the insides of its mother’s body, and who can know a secret bigger than that? And they say a lot of things, those English. What they call ‘child abuse’, us Nigerians call ‘training’. So don’t mind them.
           
Your story begins in Nigeria, which is a place like Heaven. There is continuous sunshine and everyone smiles and takes care of each other. Nigerian children work hard at school, have perfect manners, look after their parents and respect the elderly. Nigeria is brightness and stars, and earth like the skin on your cheeks: brown-red, soft and warm.
           
I am full up with proud memories from Nigeria. Most of all I remember my family. Mummy – your grandmother – was famous for shining cooking pots and shining stories. ‘Long ago,’ she would tell me and my sisters, ‘a woman, so full of empty, sold her body as if it was nothing but meat for sale at the market. She travelled all over Nigeria, that woman, looking for something to fill up her insides, and learnt many languages, searching for words to explain the emptiness.