The Lock on My Lips

Description

The Lock on My Lips is an intense drama that foregrounds the conflict over land ownership as a metaphor for contemporary gender inequalities in an African context. Mrs Ghamogha Manka has bought land in Kibaaka against customary law, where land is believed to belong to the man. Tried and found guilty by customary law, she is ordered to transfer ownership of the said land to her husband to avoid dire consequences. A fierce champion for women’s causes, Mrs Ghamogha seeks redress in the modern legal system, converting a domestic conflict into a collective battle between customary and Western-derived legal systems.

Praise for The Lock on My Lips

“…Lola’s groundbreaking work on gender significantly contributes to Cameroon Literature and theatre. While Gender Studies has been a vibrant and productive area of research in Europe and America for decades, Cameroon dramatists have hardly ventured into gender, sexuality, and gay studies in the scope of The Lock on My Lips. Perpetua K. Nkamanyang Lola’s work is a seminal blueprint for dramaturgy.”
– Dr. Gerald Niba Nforbin, Lecturer of English Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Douala

 “Lola’s The Lock on My Lips is set against the bedrock of binary oppositions rocking Kibaaka land – the male/female, tradition/modernity, indigenous/foreign, the customary law/judiciary law. These weave into place the modern societies in Cameroon, whose colonial legacies have brought it to the throes of confusion and conflicting ideas. Thus, besides the advocated gender equality, the play raises issues of justice, conflict resolution, law and order, moral decadence, sexual promiscuity, gender-based/or domestic violence, peaceful coexistence, betrayal, and otherness borne in the question of indigeneity, hybridity, and sexuality.  Lola seems to posit that aspects of cultural practices that impede human progress should be brought down while those that encourage progress should be upheld and propagated.”
– Geraldine Sinyuy, PhD, African Literature

“Lola’s The Lock on My Lips is a brilliant meditation on the ambiguity of land ownership in contemporary Cameroon. Lola uses the metaphor of a family misunderstanding over a piece of land to explore the broader and disturbing subject of land tenure, opting for legality as the “woman” gets back her piece of land. The suggestive nature of the allegory carries it beyond the feminist literary posturing evident to those familiar with the history of Cameroon. The Lock on My Lips takes prominence in developing national literature in Cameroon.”
– Jesse Moba, Associate Professor of African Literature

“A gripping and mind-blowing feminist play with women battling against an oppressive African tradition that refuses to recognise that women could be equal to, or better than, men in terms of capacity. The play seeks to balance, albeit with little success, tradition and women’s (auto) empowerment. The author has succeeded in capturing the battles of many African women. The lesson from the play is that when tradition oppresses, women can revert to the State judicial system for justice. Lola has shown that women’s battles have a future and are worth fighting for.”
– Lilian Lem Atanga, Associate Professor of African Languages and Linguistics, and Author of Language, Gender and Power in the Cameroon Parliament

 “The Lock on My Lips by Perpetua Lola Nkamanyang stars a woman whose land and rights are seized because she’s a woman. The shooting, sometimes mortal wit, on which the story hangs its imagery announces and even celebrates the sustained conflict, suspense and tension born of the stark differences in the couple. The effects of colonisation on a people, the responsibility of the colonialist and their progeny as well as that of the postcolonial subjects for the destruction of the environment and their society, the blowing out, the degeneration and fall into disease and death of families due to sexual promiscuity, the lack of parental care and education… animate the fight for the ownership of a piece of land which only the court can solve fairly. This play is an incredible referent for students of literature at all levels offering courses in Gender/Feminism, Postcolonial Studies, queer studies, and African Literature.”
– Fonyuy Musa Wirtum, Editor-in-Chief, NNAMBS Publishers, Douala

“Lola’s The Lock on My Lips is a concerto of cultural configurations of power mediated by hollow ideologies. The play picks up with a sprint –women in the streets – and then zaps through evocative discourses, landing on climactic punches, bays, and hoots of legal daggers drawn to an unfinished finale. Hooting traditional taboos face in situ constructs like sex gendering seen through expired forms of fairness. Thus, banned trans and gay indigeneity and hybridity meet fuming hate amidst violent betrayal, while lucre-fixed churchmen replay mere face-value charity…. Action-invested, the play conscripts anarchic themes to the crushing crackles of legal ripostes that refuse to rest even at the close since private and public loyalties gag the stage as unresolved ratatats riddle life with unyielding conflicts. The ‘unlocked lips’ spew waning fury on rock-hard forms subjected to remodelling at a slug pace. Unsettled motifs unsettle and the world-shaking concerns here rightfully demand many stages and stage hours to evolve this compelling scintillation of wisdom’s vision in a turbid world.”
– Ntangnyui Patrick Tata, Critic & Editor, PATAMAE Research and Editing Consultancy