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The Bride Price: An African Cultural Tale

The story is about a young woman named Aku-nna in Nigeria who is determined to fulfill her duty as a daughter by securing a high bride price to help support her family after her father falls ill. Some key events and customs included are Aku-nna stepping inside her small apartment with her brother and mother "Ma Blackie", her father telling her of a tall man who could pay a bride price for her, the cultural mix of Christianity and traditional religion, and Aku-nna loudly mourning and praising her father at his funeral as expected by local customs. The story provides insights into family and cultural traditions in Nigeria.

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Ayub Ismail Ali
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142 views2 pages

The Bride Price: An African Cultural Tale

The story is about a young woman named Aku-nna in Nigeria who is determined to fulfill her duty as a daughter by securing a high bride price to help support her family after her father falls ill. Some key events and customs included are Aku-nna stepping inside her small apartment with her brother and mother "Ma Blackie", her father telling her of a tall man who could pay a bride price for her, the cultural mix of Christianity and traditional religion, and Aku-nna loudly mourning and praising her father at his funeral as expected by local customs. The story provides insights into family and cultural traditions in Nigeria.

Uploaded by

Ayub Ismail Ali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

The book:
Book title: THE BRIDE PRICE

Fiction/None fiction the story is non-fiction, because the story based on African Quote the
cultures . page number
containing
your
arguments
Support your argument from the story:

Our understanding of the story its Non –fiction story, there are some paragraphs we
highlighted from the story.

1. Aku-nna and her brother Nna-nndo stepped inside their one-room Page 1
apartment, The boy Nna-nndo was eleven, He was tall for his age, with the Paragraph 2
narrow build of his mother. At school he had just started to use ink and this
he was determined to let everybody know. Ink makes my hair blacker.” He
had a good sense of humour, just like their mother, Ma Blackie.

2. Ma Blackie was a giant of a woman. She was so tall and straight that her few Page 1
enemies called her “the palm-tree woman”. Her jet black skin had earned Paragraph 3
her the nickname “Blackie the Black” when she was a little girl, and nothing
about her had changed much now that she had a family of her own

3. Aku-nna, meaning literally “father’s wealth”, knowing that the only


consolation he could count on from her would be her bride price. Aku-nna Page 3
on her part was determined not to let her father down. She was going to Paragraph 4
marry well, a rich man of whom her father would approve and who would
be able to afford an expensive bride price. She would have her marriage
first of all solemnised by the beautiful goddess of Ibuza

4. She was not going to let these two uncles know how she felt, that she felt Pare 4
betrayed and that she was frightened for her father’s feet, his health, his Paragraph 1
life. She put on a bold face, but her emotions showed in her large,
wondering eyes; they were moist, tears were not far away

5. Aku-nna’s father had told him: “My cousin’s daughter is grown now. She Page 10
comes from a very tall family too, so why don’t you pay for her? She will Paragraph 10
give you tall sons, because her father was tall and her mother, who is still
alive, is also tall.”

6. Asaba is a great Ibo trading town on the west of the river, a very old and a Page33
very historic town. Gloom seemed to have descended from somewhere Paragraph 3
onto everybody in the kitchen. Aku-nna could feel it but she had stopped
wondering about it. Now she hurried to escape from it all.
7. In his lifetime, Ezekiel was a typical product of this cultural mix. He would Page 38
preach the Gospel on Sundays, he would sing praises to the European Living Paragraph 1
God, he would force his children to pray every morning, to pray before and
after meals

8. On and on went Aku-nna, repeating her father’s attributes. She did not stop, Page 39.
not even when the other mourners became more subdued. Nobody could Paragraph 2
stop her, for this was what was expected of a daughter. People later
remarked that for a girl not born in Ibuza she did not do too badly.

9. They knocked the spoons against the bottles, helping to produce some kind Page 52
of music. The trouble was that there was too much music, with the horn Paragraph 3
pipe, the empty bottles, the beaded gourds, the hand-clapping, the feet-
stamping, the Christians’ cry for the New Jerusalem.

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