Under the Udala Trees

Several characters, including our narrator, decide on courses of action based on dreams: “dreams were the way in which we resolved our problems” (26).

Ijeoma and her first girlfriend, Amina, bond over sharing their dreams and discussing the ways their mothers used to interpret them: “Maybe that was a trait shared by all mothers, we decided” (121). During Adaora’s anti-homosexual Bible lessons, Ijeoma dreams of Amina: “dreams so vivid that when I woke it seemed that the waking was the dream, and the dream, my reality” (85). After the teens reconnect at the Girls’ Academy, a dream about Revelations—“hailstones,” “fire, pouring down and forming craters where they landed,” and a “carriage in the sky” (155)—causes Amina to break up with Ijeoma and marry a man.

A dream also causes Ijeoma to question her relationship with Ndidi. Ijeoma’s happiness falls after a “panicked dream, as if to mockingly ask me how I could even presume to think happiness was a thing within my reach” (195). This dream causes Ijeoma to consent to marrying Chibundu. However, dreams of Ndidi return after the wedding: “Ndidi appeared to me, more vividly than ever, in a dream” (251).