Oh gosh Chika Unigwe writes with such heartbreakingly beautiful prose… You will need to have a box of tissues nearby when you read this book as it is impossible to keep the tears at bay. While On Black Sisters Street is fictional, human trafficking is a very real problem that is a very real part of our world. Ama, Sisi, Efe, and Joyce may be fictional characters, but I am sure there are many women around the world who can relate to their stories, past and present. 

On Black Sisters Street is the story of four women who work as sex workers in Antwerp in Belgium. Sisi, Efe, and Ama are from Nigeria, and Joyce is from South Sudan by way of Nigeria. The women work and live together but are not close in terms of friendship until one of them dies. This is when they slowly reveal their own secrets and pasts to each other, and the reader understands how and why each one of them ends up where they are now. 

Written in a fragmented fashion where the narrative skips from Sisi’s life and death, to the other three women, and back again, the novel slowly reveals how tragedy, family, love, and despair leads the women to each make the choices they made, and to put their lives in the hands of a fat, demanding trafficker in Lagos. I couldn’t put the book down, every page I turned felt like a layer being unveiled, new sources of light and darkness being ignited and extinguished on these women’s lives. 

This one is going to stick with me for a while. I’m looking forward to reading other work by Chika Unigwe.