For Ethiopia, I read The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History by Aida Edemariam. I recently created my latest list of “Top Ten Faves” from my Read Around the World quest, and this book did not make my top ten, but damn, that was a close call. Every few months, I redo that list, and as time passes, my opinions about books shift and change. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book eventually moves into my Top Ten Fave–and this is an excellent problem to have with my quest! I was so naive when I started this journey in 2023, thinking I would read a few boring books and then happily return to my rut of reading books by American and English authors, but that’s another post. Let’s talk about The Wife’s Tale!

The Wife’s Tale is both the intimate memoir of Yetemegnu, the author’s grandma who lived for nearly a century (1916-2013), and the history of Ethiopia during those decades. The story is lush and gorgeously written with sensory details and a novelistic style that pulls the reader into the setting. Yetemegnu is a child bride, and although the marriage is not consummated until she is older, she still lives the vast majority of her life as a wife. Too often, history recounts the story of the Men in Charge. As a traditional wife, Yetemegnu is very much not in charge of Ethiopia’s government, but her experiences–how she feeds her family; how she keeps her children alive; how she gets them educated– are just as important to know. This is the version of history that my soul craves.

My only complaint about this book is that it made me long to write something similar about my Grandma Shirley, who died at the age of ninety-six in 2022, but my grandma did not like to tell stories about her past. Whenever I tried to tease out her memories, she shared a sentence or two at most and then changed the subject. Shirley was much more interested in enjoying the present, but I would love to be able to share stories about her childhood in New York during the Great Depression; the trauma of seeing friends go to Europe during World War II; her marriage and then divorce from my grandfather; her bad ass single years; and on and on. At least we have a lot of her photos which offer glimpses into her life.

I’m so glad that Yetemegnu shared so many intimate details of her life with her granddaughter Aida Edemariam, and that Edemariam recognized the value and importance of these stories and turned them into this magnificent personal history. The absence of female voices throughout history is regrettable, and books like The Wife’s Tale are crucial in filling those gaps. They remind us that history isn’t just about wars and rulers—it’s about the everyday lives of women like Yetemegnu, whose strength, resilience, and love shaped generations.