On Black Sisters Street

On Black Sisters Street (2009) is a novel by Chika Unigwe, a Nigerian-born Belgian writer, who now lives in the United States. It tells the story of four African women—Sisi, Efe, Ama, and Joyce—brought to Antwerp by Dele, a sex trafficker, for a steep price (30,000 euros each) and made to work as prostitutes to pay off their debts to him, five hundred euro per month. They live together in an apartment in the city’s red-light district, but to guard their precarious positions, their backstories remain more or less unknown to one another, that is, until Sisi is mysteriously murdered.

The book is organized as a series of flashbacks of the women’s previous lives, alternating with scenes of their lives in Antwerp (mostly in their apartment) on Zwartezusterstraat after they have discovered Sisi’s murder. In the first flashback, we meet Sisi, formerly known as Chisom, and learn about her middle-class childhood in Lagos. She is the only one of the four women without a clear, abject trauma in her past. As a child, she dreamt of leaving her hometown and upward mobility. She went to university and graduated with a degree in finance and business administration, but after years of job applications still had not found a job. We flash forward to the other three women at home, still wondering what might have happened to the fourth.

The next flashback follows Chisom three years into her relationship with Peter. He promises to take her away to Europe, but as the scene ends, we learn she plans to leave him. In the next scene, still in Lagos, she meets Dele, the hustler who will later become her pimp. We flash forward to Antwerp again. Ama, Efe, and Joyce have been told by their landlady, Madam, that Sisi’s body has been found. They are all on edge but begin to see each other as family. In the next flashback, Chisom plans to leave Lagos and work for Dele. Peter is heartbroken to lose her, but she dreams of being rich. We watch her take a taxi to the airport and quietly fly off.



The next chapter introduces us to Efe’s backstory. She is impregnated at the age of sixteen by Titus, an older man, the first man she has ever slept with. He is wealthy from owning a hair weave business and buys her clothes. Her first sexual experience is painful, though subsequent sessions gradually become less so. She realizes she is pregnant and tells Titus, who immediately gets dressed and leaves the motel room where they carry on their affair. From then on, he avoids Efe. She gives birth to a boy and names him Lucky Ikponwosa, or L.I. Titus, who has a wife and children, rejects his illegitimate son. That’s when Efe runs into Dele, and he introduces her to his opportunity. She decides to leave L.I. with her family and go to Europe.

Back in the present, the three women process Efe’s story and continue to process the tragedy that has struck their house. Tensions remain between them in between moments of solidarity. Ama defends her choice and the benefit they stand to derive from their position. Hers is the next story we will hear.

Ama grows up in a very religious house. Her father, whom everyone called Brother Cyril, is a popular pastor of one of the largest churches in the city. The night after her eighth birthday, Brother Cyril begins raping Ama. Unable to tell anyone what he did, she would speak it to the walls of her bedroom. He continues day after day until she gets her period. Later in Ama’s youth, while fighting with Brother Cyril about the disappointing test scores she posted, she confronts her parents about his actions. Brother Cyril angrily denies her words and denounces her ungratefulness. Ama’s mother may or may not believe her, but refuses to risk her home over Ama’s allegation. Brother Cyril reveals he is not her biological father, but took in her pregnant mother out of charity. He throws Ama out of the house, and she moves in with her mother’s cousin, Mama Eko, in Lagos. There she meets Dele, one of Mama Eko’s customers. She decides to prove to her family that she doesn’t need them and agrees to Dele’s proposal.



All along we have followed Sisi in brief, interspersed chapters, as she found herself in Antwerp, was introduced to Madam and Efe and her new life, applied for asylum with a made-up story and was rejected. She often walks the streets of Antwerp—these are the main episodes in which we see anything of the city, where she loves shopping. She frequents a club where there are clients to be found, though she dislikes the work there.

The next story is Joyce’s—or, as she was known before Zwartezusterstraat, Alek. She is from Sudan. Caught between militias in a civil war, they attempt to flee, but her parents and brother are murdered by soldiers, who rape her. She is processed at a refugee camp, which becomes her home and where she falls in love with a Nigerian soldier named Polycarp. He is deployed to Lagos and takes Alek with him. They live together in the city. He starts taking short trips to Onitsha to visit his family but doesn’t bring Alek. The second time, he brings his mother back to Lagos with him. During that visit, Polycarp informs Alek that he must marry an Igbo girl, or his parents would never forgive him. He is apologetic, she heartbroken. He knows Dele and arranges a meeting with the three of them, where she learns of Dele’s offer for her to do sex work in Europe; she agrees. Dele gives her her new name. Her travel is arranged. Joyce recalls that she had gotten along well with Sisi on her arrival.

Sisi’s life leading up to the novel’s present becomes increasingly miserable. She regrets coming to Antwerp. She recalls a legendary Ghanaian prostitute whose client fell in love with her. Then she meets a man named Luc at a church Efe had introduced her to, who pursues her for a while. Eventually, she begins a relationship with him; he immediately falls in love with her and wants to take her away from her life. She weighs the opportunity and everything else she’s been through, against the risk that Luc will betray her, but she decides to go with him. She is nervous about the decision.



We flash forward briefly to the three women discussing Madam’s demanding attitude in the face of Sisi’s death. The doorbell rings; it’s Luc, asking where Sisi is.

Flashing back to Sisi as she prepares to run away, she arrives at Luc’s house. He is not home yet. The doorbell rings; it’s Segun, the awkward, stuttering man who shares Madam’s apartment with the four women. He wants to talk to her in the car. She doesn’t know what he wants with her, but she’s not afraid of him. She gets in the car. He kills her with a swift hammer to the head. We find out her death was arranged by Dele.