Trauma and Narrative: A Reading of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

This paper attempts to establish a connection between the seemingly disparate disciplines of literature and psychiatry. It argues that the causes of the neuroses and nervous breakdown suffered by some of the leading characters in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, especially Iya Femi and Bolanle, are traceable to some traumatic experiences in their past which they themselves are very likely to be reluctant to identify as the genesis of their problems. It points at the therapeutic possibilities offered by the act of telling, as constituting a remedy for trauma-induced neuroses and nervous breakdown.