This Motherless Land

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, sexual harassment and assault, self-harm, and substance abuse.

This Motherless Land explores the ideas of prejudice and privilege and the way that the two interact. In the novel, every character has some form of privilege, whether it’s related to race, money, social status, and more. Additionally, as characters from different backgrounds interact, they all hold some form of prejudice, making assumptions about each other while knowing very little about them. In this way, the novel examines the interplay between these two ideas and the way that they impact people’s lives.

Central to the exploration of prejudice and privilege are the two protagonists, Funke and Liv, whose experiences mirror each other throughout the text. Since they both come from wealthy families, Funke and Liv are similar in the financial privilege that they have. Although Funke is laden with misfortune in the text—through the trauma of losing her mother and brother and the forced upheaval of her life two different times—she still has a wealthy family in Nigeria and lives off her grandparents’ fortune in England. Similarly, Liv also experiences trauma in the text, as she is sexually exploited by Clinton, suffers from substance misuse issues, and loses her best friend, believing Funke is dead for years.