The mother's milk
In "Breastmilk," a new mother finds herself unable to produce breast milk after giving birth. Prior to the birth of their child, the woman had forgiven her husband for being unfaithful. This painful decision, which she had promised she never would have made to uphold her feminist ideals, has hurt her immensely and made her unable to feed her child. Her milk (or lack thereof) is symbolic of her self-betrayal, as she ignored her ideals to keep her family in tact against her better judgement.
The woman's pimples
A woman featured in the collection often gets pimples right before she does bad acts, which symbolizes the way that a family's toxic history can have a grip on people. The woman was possessed by her grandmother, whose negative energy coaxed the woman into doing evil things. Conveniently, the pimples went away as soon as the woman released the negative energy caused by her grandmother.
Windows
In "The Hollow," Arit enters a house in hopes of remodeling it. Traditionally, windows are symbols of doors into other worlds; however, in the short story, they are symbols of the way that people change their perspectives based on the information they have. Throughout the story, they move position around the house, not allowing Arit to create a firm opinion (because she isn't able to get the information she needs).
Women fixing things
In each of the stories in the collection, the characters often turn to women to fix things in the characters life. This is because men often aren't interested (or even willing) to help do something. For instance, in “24, Alhaji Williams Street,” the characters turn to the boys' mothers as they try to determine why their boys are dying from a mysterious fever. This reflects the collection's overarching theme of feminism and shows that oftentimes, women are looked at when things need to get done.
