A book club book! Well, novella really. This is a pretty fascinating transformative work - it's based on a rap piece by clippings., which in turn was inspired by the explanation behind a techno song by Drexciya. It is a mythology built around the idea of pregnant women who were enslaved and then thrown overboard when they died during the transatlantic crossing - what if those women's babies were born underwater, and created a new people? How would that culture cope with the trauma built into their origin, their history?
The story centers on a young wajinru named Yetu, who has the responsibility of remembering this trauma for all of the days of the year except for three, when during a ceremony she shares the history of her people with all of them. It is an enormous burden, and one that she suddenly decides she can no longer bear it. She leaves her people and goes to the surface, to an island, where she means a human woman who is also dealing with the memories of her people, the loss of a homeland, the struggle to find meaning in it all.
There were a lot of elements of this story that I liked, and I found the writing to be really compelling. It was a hard read, without easy answers, and I don't know exactly how I wanted the story to end, but I wanted it to be either more difficult or easier, somehow - I can't articulate what a better (for me) resolution would be, but I wanted it to land in a different way than it did. Still, I'm very glad I read it.
Grade: B
The story centers on a young wajinru named Yetu, who has the responsibility of remembering this trauma for all of the days of the year except for three, when during a ceremony she shares the history of her people with all of them. It is an enormous burden, and one that she suddenly decides she can no longer bear it. She leaves her people and goes to the surface, to an island, where she means a human woman who is also dealing with the memories of her people, the loss of a homeland, the struggle to find meaning in it all.
There were a lot of elements of this story that I liked, and I found the writing to be really compelling. It was a hard read, without easy answers, and I don't know exactly how I wanted the story to end, but I wanted it to be either more difficult or easier, somehow - I can't articulate what a better (for me) resolution would be, but I wanted it to land in a different way than it did. Still, I'm very glad I read it.
Grade: B
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