The Politics of Her Silence: A Feminist Reading of Chimamanda Adichie’s Dream Count || Gospel Okoro || Review

 

THE POLITICS OF HER SILENCE: A FEMINIST READING OF CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S DREAM COUNT

It is a truism that one should not mistake the silence of the lion for weakness. Consequent upon this truth, lions resort to calculated patience. Just like the poor that are rich in patience, lions stalk their prey with quiet precision, using the tall grass and shadows as allies. Rarely do they charge outright. Instead, they close the distance in silence, conserving strength, waiting until the odds are undeniably in their favor, often striking only when within 100 feet or so. This restraint, far from weakness, is a show of instinctive brilliance and strategic power. The lion knows the value of timing, of silence, of preparation. True to that same instinct, award-winning writer, Chimamanda Adichie returns to the literary scene after over a decade’s hiatus, not with noise or haste, but with the quiet force of something powerful with her latest novel, already enjoying wide acclaim. Much like the lion, Adichie has never needed to roar to make her presence felt. Her return with a new story is nothing short of a timely show of instinctive brilliance and is already a song on the world's lips.

At the heart of Dream Count is Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer whose career catapults her across continents but is now marooned in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her physical immobility becomes a metaphor for emotional and psychological stillness, an internal rupture that time itself seems unable to mend. From her small Brooklyn apartment, Chiamaka reflects on the life she has lived and those she has left behind in Lagos. Through her eyes, we are drawn into a fragmented but interconnected web of other women whose lives form the emotional and thematic threads of the novel. We also see Zikora, Chiamaka’s childhood friend, a high-powered corporate lawyer in Washington, D.C. Zikora’s story is one of unraveling: despite her impressive resumé, she is trapped within a failing relationship, an unexpected pregnancy, and the gnawing realization that the life she has built may not be the one she truly wants. Meanwhile, Omelogor, Chiamaka’s cousin, a finance executive in Lagos, also grapples with existential ennui masked by professional success. Her sections of the novel are marked by interior monologues exploring the quiet discontent that plagues even the most materially comfortable lives.

Then there is Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper during her time in Lagos—perhaps the most surprising narrative voice in the novel. Initially presented as peripheral, Kadiatou’s story slowly expands, revealing the complex intersections of class, gender, and survival. Her backstory, one of rural displacement and domestic labor, adds necessary texture to the novel, grounding it in the socio-economic realities Adichie has always been attentive to. Thematically, Dream Count continues Adichie’s interest in the entanglements of race, migration, and gender, in a less polemical manner, unlike her erstwhile works. For instance, while Americanah tackles racism in America with biting social commentary, Dream Count offers a more psychological and emotional response. Chiamaka, for instance, quietly endures instead of theorizing her Blackness in America. When she witnesses a protest from her apartment window, she is overcome not by political anger, but by fatigue—a weariness that permeates much of the novel. Hence, Adichie charts the emotional afterlife of activism, asking: What happens when the slogans fade, when the headlines quiet, when the real work of being begins again, alone, in silence?

Steering along the thematic trajectory of gender, Adichie confronts the discomforting silences women face in a world cracked open by a pandemic and shaped by patriarchy. Through women-characters, Adichie crafts a novel that transcends merely surviving lockdowns to confronting the imprisonments we carry within. Chiamaka’s life, for instance, navigates a solitude that slowly mutates into revelation. Her reflections on love—especially with a charming but evasive academic—expose the performance expected of women: to be desirable but not needy, intelligent but not intimidating, complete yet always available. In her desire to be loved on her own terms, Chiamaka embodies the tension of female agency restrained by the need to be palatable. Her independence, while structural, is still emotionally negotiated through the gaze of men.

This motif repeats itself in Zikora’s story. Her betrayal is personal and emblematic of the larger societal narrative that praises accomplished women while still tethering their worth to male affirmation. Adichie refuses to turn Zikora into a victim or a saint. Instead, she is complex, at once resentful and resilient, broken and rebuilding. Her strength emerges from endurance; the stubborn kind that keeps showing up despite being discarded. Here, Adichie makes a powerful statement: female agency does not always roar; sometimes it simply refuses to disappear. Omelogor, the cousin in Lagos with financial success but no marital validation, complicates the narrative further. Her material autonomy is misread as arrogance by a society that still equates female fulfillment with matrimony. Through her, Adichie lays bare the patriarchal scaffolding that deems a woman’s wealth suspicious unless attached to a man’s name. Omelogor challenges this with quiet defiance, her life a refusal to collapse into the domesticity expected of her. Yet she is not entirely at peace; her discomfort is a reminder that even strong women can ache, even free women can long.

But perhaps the most haunting narrative is that of Kadiatou, the housekeeper whose silence carries a storm. Her experience as an immigrant woman violated by a man of power pulls the novel into its darkest terrain. Her body becomes a site of conquest, and her voice nearly erased. Adichie does not sensationalize this violence. Instead, she confronts the audience with the normalized injustice women like Kadiatou endure: those who do not have the language, legal access, or societal status to fight back. The cruelty she experiences is systemic, but so too is her survival. In her quiet decision to keep living and to love her child, Adichie crowns her with dignity. What tightens the thread across these stories is the presence of male hegemony. The male characters are not caricatures of evil but creatures of entitlement. Their freedoms are assumed; their mistakes, forgivable; their absence, rationalized. The weight of consequence always falls on the woman. Adichie’s genius lies in exposing how this power operates not just externally but internally; in how women begin to doubt, police, and betray themselves in the name of love, respectability, and survival.

Sisterhood, then, becomes a survival tool for male hegemony. Beyond shared nationality and gender, the women are united by the way in which time—suspended, lost, or remembered—shapes their lives. Adichie captures, with remarkable delicacy, the sensation of pandemic time: elastic, inert, quietly devastating. The days bleed into one another. Memory becomes both refuge and burden. Conversations, often over long-distance calls or delayed emails, serve as fragile bridges between isolation and intimacy. In those moments, Adichie offers an alternative to male-centered validation: solidarity. This solidarity doesn't always heal, but it steadies. And in a world so invested in female loneliness, steadiness is radical. Also, the novel unfolds less like a narrative arc and more like a constellation of moments: the silence after bad news, the awkward tension in a Zoom call, the melancholy of watching old WhatsApp voice notes. All of these unites the four women into a world of grief and personal losses. Unlike Americanah, where romantic longing often eclipsed platonic relationships, Dream Count places the emotional life between women at the narrative center. Chiamaka and Zikora’s friendship is not idealized, but tested, frayed, and occasionally resentful. There are secrets they do not share, judgments they do not voice, but their connection grows. Through these bonds, the novel explores grief as an individual burden and a communal process. These women grieve together—losses of parents, relationships, careers, selves—and in doing so, they become legible to one another in ways that feel both authentic and hard-earned.

Still, Dream Count is not without flaws. Some readers may find its pace languid, even meandering. The narrative doesn't build toward a singular climax or resolution. Instead, it accumulates emotional weight gradually, like sediment. This will undoubtedly frustrate those accustomed to more traditional narrative arcs. Additionally, while Adichie masterfully captures the inner lives of her characters, the external world—the political, economic, and public dimensions of the pandemic—remain somewhat underdeveloped. One might have hoped for a more expansive treatment of how the pandemic affected different strata of Nigerian society, especially given Adichie’s proven skill in mapping the intersections of personal and political lives. Conclusively, the novel sheds light on the silence beneath women’s public selves. And in doing so, it reaffirms fiction as art for truth's sake. Adichie is not merely telling stories; she is archiving the wounds of being female in a world that still counts men as dreams and women as dreamers with limits. With Dream Count, Adichie has not only reminded us of her unmatched literary command but has also posed a quiet challenge: what does it mean for a woman to count herself—her body, her story, her longing—as enough?

Gospel Okoro is a writer and researcher from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is an ex-associate critical editor of the Muse Journal, an alumnus of the Journalism for Liberty Fellowship, Africa, and currently a fellow at Sprinng Writing Fellowship, and currently a fellow at PowerShift Africa Fellowship. His Minutes of Memories short story was awarded and shortlisted for Tell! Africa Storyteller Award of the Year in 2021. He's also the recipient of the INKBLED AFRICA Under-30 Impact Award, the Damian Opata prize for critical writing and Leonard Ugwuanyi prize for flash fiction. His works have appeared at Alewahouse, UpwriteNG, Providus Bank Poetry Café, OneBlackBoyLikeThat, Fiery Scribe, The Nation's Newspaper, Sun News, and elsewhere. He loves God and books