The Thread: Abi Dare’s 'The Girl with the Louding Voice'

Novelist Jennifer Weiner hit my radar in 2016 when she spoke up about how undervalued so-called women’s fiction is, particularly by male writers and publishers. Got a minute? It’s worth a Google search.

When The New York Times asked Weiner which subjects she wished more authors would write about, I read on with curiosity. She had a provocative answer: “I’d love more stories about women and money,” she said. “Not women who marry money, but women who have their own money.”

I thought immediately of Abi Dare’s “The Girl with the Louding Voice,” published earlier this year.

Adunni, a bright and fiery 14-year-old, desires nothing more than to go to school. However, that’s not the case. In the novel, she’s required to help support her impoverished family and enters a wealthy household in Lagos, Nigeria, as a housemaid.

Dare’s work accounts the exploitation that maids endure in Nigeria, where many are treated more like indentured servants. She told The New York Times that a conversation with her mother, when she was still a teen, influenced the book.

Here’s what happened: Her mother had noticed Dare’s burgeoning interest in boys and said, “You’re going to get older. Beauty will fade. Everything will fade, but the only thing that will not fade is your intelligence, and what is in your head, your education.”

My Thread must-read is a novel you might’ve missed from earlier this year, “The Girl with the Louding Voice” by Abi Dare.