‘I was leaving my body, could die’ — Chimamanda talks childbirth struggles in new book

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author, has captured the fears and pains women face at childbirth in ‘Zikora’, her soon-to-be-released novel on pregnancy.

The 35-page book, which is available to Prime members and Kindle Unlimited subscribers for free, will debut on October 27, as a part of the Amazon Original Stories.

In a statement released ahead of its debut on Friday, the author described ‘Zikora’ as a short story that shines the light on some of the challenges of pregnancy and childbirth.

‘Zikora’ follows the titular character of a female Nigerian lawyer in Washington D.C.

Deserted by her high-powered lover after conception, ‘Zikora’ deals with the crash of her relationship while her mother shows up to help prepare her for motherhood.

“All through the night, my mother sat near me but never touched me. Once, I screamed, a short scream that lanced the air in the hospital room,” the book reads in part.

“And she said, ‘That’s how labour is,’ in Igbo, and I wanted to say, ‘No shit,’ but of course she didn’t understand colloquial Americanisms. I had prepared for pain but this was not mere pain.

“It was something like pain and different from pain. It sat like fire in my back, spreading to my thighs, squeezing and crushing my insides, pulling downward, spiralling.

“Then came a wave of exhaustion, tiredness limp and bloodless. I was leaving my body. I could die. I could die here, now, today, like Chinyere died in a fancy Lagos hospital that had flat-screen TVs in the labour ward.

“It was her third childbirth and she was walking, chatting with the nurses, stopping to breathe through each contraction, and then mid-sentence, she paused and collapsed and died. She was my cousin’s cousin. I had not liked her but I had mourned her.”

Chimamanda’s forthcoming book follows on the trail of her successes over the years, which have seen her win multiple awards.

After ‘Americanah’, her last novel which was released back in 2013, she had earned the National Book Critics Circle Award.

She has also earned herself international acclaim and heated accolades through other works including ‘Purple Hibiscus’, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, and ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, all of which are available in several languages.