64 pages • 2 hours read
Nikki MayThis Motherless Land
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “1992”
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “Liv”
Content Warning: This section of the text depicts racism, substance abuse, and pregnancy lose.
Liv works at Selfridges doing women’s makeup. She regularly works hungover and high, living alone and partying every night.
Liv wakes up in the middle of the night covered in blood with extreme stomach pains. She realizes she is covered in blood. She calls Jojo, who is now a pediatrician. He takes her to the hospital, where she learns she has lost the pregnancy—without even knowing she was pregnant. Jojo demands that she either move in with him or return home to The Ring. She moves everything out of her apartment and goes home for the first time in six years.
Liv walks around the garden with Grandma. They talk about Lizzie and Margot, with Grandma acknowledging that she mistreated Lizzie while spoiling Margot. She insists that Liv is still young and can turn her life around. She agrees to go see Derek, the family lawyer, to get her £50,000 inheritance now that she has turned 25.
After speaking with Derek, Liv asks Grandma if Kate knew she was in Grandpa’s will. Grandma admits that she didn’t, as Margot refused to tell her. However, Margot did arrange with the lawyers for Kate to get her inheritance early, then she sent it to Kate and her father in Lagos.
That night, Liv goes through her mother’s things. She finds the letter from Kate’s father. He wrote that Kate was sick and was constantly calling for Liv. He asked for Liv to contact her. Liv begins to sob, realizing that Kate died thinking that Liv didn’t care. Her Grandma consoles her, then shows her the letter from one day after which says that Kate died. However, this one is typed, which Liv finds odd, but Grandma insists it’s because her father was grieving.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “Funke”
Funke is currently dating Toks, whom she has realized is gay, while also sleeping with Bola. The arrangement works for all of them, as Toks can pretend he is straight and Bola and Funke can be good friends while still having sex. Bola is currently mad that Funke would not go to Scotland with him, but she is adamant that his family would never accept their relationship as she is not Muslim.
After her graduation, Funke’s father presented her with her £10,000 inheritance from Margot. At the time, he told her that he refused it; however, he secretly took it and invested it. Funke is angry, not wanting the money, but also knows it will help her a lot.
Funke goes to Chloé’s where she, Chloé, and Oyinkan celebrate her graduation. Chloé gives her a plane ticket to Barcelona to go to the Olympics. Despite their generosity, Funke is adamant that she can’t accept the ticket. She is afraid to get on the plane, having bad memories of being taken from her home both times she has been on a plane.
When she is alone with Oyinkan, Funke tries to explain that it is too generous and she can’t accept it, but Oyinkan insists that she must. She thinks of how Oyinkan and her family are like Liv—using their money and influence to get what they want. She feels “guilty” for thinking that way but realizes that she can’t trust anyone after how Liv treated her.
Funke goes to LUTH, where she begins her work. The last patient she checks on recognizes her name and tells her that her mother helped cure his stutter when he was a child. She realizes that the people she touched in Lagos are her “legacy,” and that she should be grateful and embrace what her mother left behind—including the money from her family.
At the airport, Funke is afraid and nervous. She admits to Oyinkan that every time she has got on a plane, it’s because something bad had happened. Oyinkan assures her that she is not like Funke’s family; she will never do anything bad to her.
At the Olympics, Funke excitedly watches the Nigerian 4x100 meter relay team. They are not expected to make the final but they do, ending up with a Bronze medal. Funke, Toks, and their friends celebrate, waving their Nigerian flag, and they are shown on the big screen. Funke realizes that she feels “hope and possibility” for the first time since leaving England (221).
Later, Toks tells her that he got a new job and is returning home to stay in Nigeria. He asks Funke if they can continue to date, and she agrees.
Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary: “Liv”
Liv flips through the channels on the TV and decides to watch the Olympics. She watches the 4x100 meter relay race and sees Nigeria win. She then sees Kate celebrating in the crowd. She yells to Grandma that Kate is alive and on TV, but Grandma dismisses it. She insists that Liv needs to get help and calls Jojo.
Liv agrees to check herself into the Priory, a mental health facility, after deciding that she had hallucinated Kate on TV. She stays there for a month, initially depressed and angry before discovering that drawing makes her feel better. She fills two binders with drawings from The Ring and of Kate.
When Liv goes home, she and Grandma have a memorial ceremony for Kate on her 24th birthday. Grandma gives Liv Kate’s pearl necklace, insisting that Liv did a lot for Kate while the rest of the family treated her poorly. Liv assures her that she is doing much better now, realizing “for the first time in years” she is looking “forward and not just backward” (227).
Part 3 Analysis
Part 3 of the text serves largely as a transitional period for both Liv and Funke, exploring the stage in both their lives where they make changes and adapt to life in their mid-20s. For Liv, she has continued to spiral for the last four years into further drug and alcohol dependency to cope with the loss of Kate. However, she also reconnects with both Jojo and Grandma, which reflects The Importance of Support in Surviving Trauma. After Kate loses her pregnancy, Jojo demands that she either live with him or go back to The Ring, forcing her out of her spiral and putting her into a position where someone can help her with her grief, lack of direction, and substance misuse.
Similarly, Funke continues to deal with her past trauma of dislocation and mistreatment at the hands of the Stone family. She lives a largely transitory life, living at Chloé’s estate and having two unstable relationships—one with a gay man and one who resents her for not committing fully to him. She notes how “Everyone was sorted, getting on with their lives, but Funke was dreading this new chapter […] It felt like the world was shifting under her feet. Again” (206). This feeling is rooted in her past movement, as each time she felt comfortable, she was uprooted and forced to live in a new place.
Additionally, her trust issues with Oyinkan’s family and their generosity show her inability to trust people after feeling as though Liv betrayed her. However, after Oyinkan reassures her that she “will never let [her] down. Never” and that she is “not like [Funke’s] family” (216), Funke agrees to trust Oyinkan, further conveying the theme of the value of support from others. Oyinkan’s friendship allows Funke to overcome her fears and live her life, while beginning to put her past trauma over relocation behind her.
Funke’s comparison of Oyinkan’s family to the Stones also explores important elements of The Interplay Between Prejudice and Privilege. Funke thinks how “Oyinkan didn’t recognize how her privilege made things easy. To her it was normal. She didn’t know what it was like to be in constant fear of rejection. She had a safety net. Just like Liv” (209). While this comparison is apt, it also ignores two important points about privilege. First, Oyinkan’s family is not like Liv’s: They have supported Funke throughout her life, giving her a place to live and saving her both after her mother’s death and when she could not live with her father on her return to Nigeria. Funke initially fails to recognize this due to the trauma she experienced in London. Second, Funke also continues to ignore the privilege that she herself has, with Oyinkan and her inheritance money serving as her own “safety net.”
Both of these points reflect the interplay between prejudice and privilege in the novel. Experiencing privilege does not make a person inherently bad or selfish; instead, it depends on how the person uses their privilege. While the Stones use it to control others and enact their prejudicial beliefs, Oyinkan’s family uses it out of generosity and to support others. Ultimately, Funke’s decision to accept her inheritance money is an acceptance of the privilege she is offered, which she will use to “embrace every aspect of her mother’s legacy” (213), using the money to help others.
Through the use of dramatic irony via the shifting point-of-view, two important facts are revealed to the reader, yet hidden from the characters. First, the reader learns that Funke and Liv should have each received a £50,000 inheritance from Grandpa. Grandma insists that Margot sent the money to Nigeria, defending Margot when Liv begins to suspect that something strange happened years ago with Funke’s removal from London. However, through Funke’s point of view, the reader learns that Funke only received £10,000. This fact continues to convey that Margot is an antagonist in the text, as she lied about the money, while also building suspense toward the moment when Kate uncovers the truth about her mother.
Additionally, the reader also knows that Funke is still alive, while Liv does not. When Liv sees Kate on the television at the Olympics, she excitedly tries to tell Grandma, yet Grandma insists that Liv is imagining things and convinces Liv that she is wrong. While this is a humorous moment in the text, it also serves as the catalyst for Liv’s commitment to treatment for her substance misuse, as she realizes just how much the trauma of losing Funke continues to affect her. Additionally, like the other moment of dramatic irony, it also builds suspense in the novel to the moment when Liv finally realizes that Kate has survived.
