La Bastarda
SynopsisPlot
La Bastarda is the story of the orphaned teen Okomo, who lives under the watchful eye of her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. Forbidden from seeking him out, she enlists the help of other village outcasts: her gay uncle and a gang of “mysterious” girls reveling in their so-called indecency. Drawn into their illicit trysts, Okomo finds herself falling in love with their leader and rebelling against the rigid norms of Fang culture.
Story
About this book
La Bastarda follows Okomo, an orphaned teenager living under the close supervision of her grandmother in a Fang community in Equatorial Guinea. Okomo longs to find her father, but her grandmother forbids it. With no clear path forward, she turns to the people around her who also exist on the edges of village life: her gay uncle and a group of young women known for defying local expectations of how women should behave.
The group operates outside the boundaries set by Fang cultural tradition, and Okomo is gradually pulled into their world. As she grows closer to the girls and their leader, she begins to fall in love, a development that places her in direct conflict with the social rules she has grown up with. The novel treats questions of sexuality, belonging, and family silence with a matter-of-fact tone, grounding them in daily village realities rather than abstraction.
Trifonia Melibea Obono is from Equatorial Guinea, one of the smallest countries on the African continent. La Bastarda is noted as the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English. The original text was written in Spanish, the official language of the country since the colonial period.
