I don’t seem to understand people who have a problem with a book they haven’t read simply because the title is controversial.
There’s this Nigerian-descended author who recently talked about a book she wrote on X, and it has caused quite an uproar, particularly among married Nigerian women. Their issue is the title: Husband Is Useless.
What I find strange is that many of them haven’t read the book. They haven’t seen a single page, a snippet, or even an excerpt. They’re simply angry at the title and I keep wondering why they are so triggered by a title if, in fact, their husband isn’t useless?
If I saw a book titled Husband Is Useless and I knew my marriage was nothing like what the title suggested, I wouldn’t be shaken by it. If anything, I’d probably read it, partly for the fun of it and partly because I’d be curious to get into the writer’s mind and see life from her perspective. Maybe she’s writing from experience. Maybe she’s writing about someone else’s experience or she’s fictionalised something she has witnessed. Who knows?
The fact that one woman has a rosy marriage doesn’t erase the reality that another woman’s marriage may be violent, lonely, or deeply unhappy.
From the bright side, this book may have been written for women who can actually relate to it. Women who have stories they cannot bring themselves to tell. Women who have lived through things they don’t have the words or courage to publicly articulate. So when someone eventually writes a story that gives those experiences a voice, I don’t understand why everyone who cannot relate to it feels the need to take offence.
You don’t have to see yourself in every book you read. Sometimes you simply read and understand that another person’s reality exists.
There’s this trend on Nigerian TikTok about what women have achieved, or lost, since getting married, and honestly, some of the stories are heartbreaking.
Thousands of women are living with men who would rather resort to violence than have a difficult conversation. Women are being beaten, women are being expected to contribute financially through 50/50 arrangements while still carrying the overwhelming responsibility for cooking, cleaning, childcare and managing the home and when they dare to raise an argument that should reasonably favour them, some are met with violence. There are screenshots, photographs and testimonies everywhere.
So imagine a woman eventually deciding to write about these realities. And because she fictionalises the story, we suddenly decide that the experiences must be imaginary? Fiction doesn’t mean an experience has no basis in reality.
I’ve read books that felt like the author somehow crawled into my head, found experiences I had struggled to articulate and put them on paper. Those books were healing for me because they gave me the strange comfort of knowing that someone else understands.
That is one of the beautiful things about books. They can give language to experiences people have spent years trying to bury and they can make someone feel seen.
So the argument that the mere title Husband Is Useless is somehow demonising all men is, quite frankly, ridiculous to me. A book title is not a personal attack on your husband.
And perhaps, and I’m only saying perhaps, the reason some people are so offended is because the shoe fits a little too comfortably. Maybe some women are more concerned with protecting their husbands’ egos than confronting the realities other women are describing. What I find more interesting is that it isn’t even men leading the outrage. It’s women.
Women who, instead of asking, “What stories is this book trying to tell?” seem more interested in asking, “How dare someone write this about husbands?” Like read the book first then we can argue about the content.
Getting angry at a book you haven’t read because its title made you uncomfortable is like reviewing a movie because you didn’t like the poster.
Posted Using INLEO
