Hopefully it's not too late to say welcome to the new year! Let's just jump right into this one. Here are some books I've recently read.
Lovely One by Ketanji Jackson Brown: This book took my breath away, in the best possible way. It is the reminder that hard work will never be out of style. I love when a book surprises me and this one did. I mean, of course I knew the woman was brilliant. No way a black woman gets to be Supreme Court justice being mediocre. They would never let it. If you see a Black woman in a respectable or powerful position, know she is likely 10 times better than everyone else; there is never any room for error. So yeah I knew she was that girl. But I did not expect this kind of extraordinary brilliance. What a woman. On the one hand, it feels God-ordained, as though no matter what she did, she was always destined for this kind of greatness. On the other, I fear this woman. The way she has been diligent since DAY ONE: studying relentlessly and consistently. She always worked so hard: she was on debate teams in high school where she won countless awards; she won numerous academic awards, holding herself to extremely high standards at that tender age--standards that even adults can't possibly attain; then she proceeded to Harvard in the 80s as one of the few Black people in the institution AND still managed to graduate magna cum laude. Then she got into Harvard Law school and earned a spot on Harvard Law Review, which anyone would tell you can only be done with exceptional grades and intense commitment. She went on to get some of the most prestigious clerkships right out of law school. Nothing about this woman is an accident: her life is marked by a doggedness, preparation, hard-work so rarely seen nowadays. She comes from a legacy of excellence: her parents were first in their respective families to go to college, but it's not that; it's the intentionality with which they raised her and primed her for discipline that's worth emulating. She was so carefully raised, what a thing to behold. So imagine my fury when a college dropout, an airhead whose claim to fame is stoking hatred and spewing nonsense (albeit loudly) on YouTube had the effrontery to challenge this woman's excellence. I also learned the importance of community and how we really are the company we keep. These woman's friends (some from high school days) are exceptional in their fields of law, medicine, engineering (I mean, BIG NAMES too). She talks a lot about her family too and raising an autistic kid, being married to such a lovely man; it's all just sophistication and erudition seeping from it all. This book should be compulsory reading for every prepubescent boy or girl. Heck, everyone NEEDS to read this and not just once. What a reminder that excellence is a watchword.
"We are repeatedly what we do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: This book was a lot. It was sooo deeply unenjoyable for me, so painful to read. I couldn't remember the last time I felt like so about a book. I couldn’t and didn't connect to a single character and there were millions of main characters. So many things happening, so many timelines, it was a doozy. At some point, parts of the novel were powerpoint presentations. I know it was supposed to be a creative choice but it fell flat for me. I don't know what good thing to even say about this and I always like to have a good thing to say about a book, or any work of art, really. Like what does the title even mean??? It wasn't until I finished that I found that this book WON A PULITZER PRIZE. So something is very clearly wrong with me. As a writer myself, what sticks out to me is that certain people are allowed to take certain creative liberties the way some others aren't. If you know you know. No way a Black girl like me presents a book like this to the powers that be in the industry AND it gets accepted. It would be deemed so unconventional, so experimental, so out of the ordinary as to be flown out the window. But hey, good for her!
The Color Purple by Alice Walker: I was really surprised I hadn’t read this. Really surprised. It’s obviously a classic in every sense of the word and it’s so hard speaking on a classic. I can't say that I felt connected to Celie in the way that I think I was supposed to. But I can say that in so far as a book transports you to a time, to a place, to a despicable era, this book did. Without centering the horrific acts of white people, it does let us understand how Black women survived tyranny and racism and poverty and sexual violence. I was surprised to see it was an epistolary novel (a book in the form of letters). Irrespective of its format, it is certainly very powerful book exploring. I recently explored how the first film adaptation was received in the Black community, with so many Black women feeling seen for the first time and so many Black men feeling demonized and attacked. I think truths are often uncomfortable, nuanced, and complex. But a real artist never shies away from any of these in the telling of a story. And Alice Walker is a real artist. You find yourself asking, how can our world be so dark, so bare, so cruel? You’re too afraid of that answer so you continue to turn the pages silently, mechanically willing it to end. The thing that almost stands out as a problem is Cellie carries too much burden. I don’t mean that in the sense that she goes through all that horror, but that the author used her to deliver too much of her (the author) own messages. I think its sometimes what happens when a writer is also an activist. Nevermind that part of arts job is to shine the light on darkness, it must find a way to do this without seeming like it is. Go figure. And time? What is time in this book? Sometimes a decade passes by between two consecutive sentences. And I must confess, I didn’t fall in love with this book the way I hoped I would.
The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page: No point saying too much here about this book as I plan on writing something longer, with more reflections on the person that was Barbara Walters. In the meantime, this biography was comprehensive and a page turner.
Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh: The first three quarters of this book was deeply personal. Then the last quarter or so zoomed out and was quite political. I think the political is often personal so that wasn't inherently the problem for me. It was just by the time the book got political, it seemed as if the protagonist had handed off the story to someone else and was watching from afar. It felt like the Obiefuna of the last pages was a different one from the one in the earlier parts of the book. And well, yea sure one can attribute that to growing up, but I don't feel like being so charitable. In that sense, the book felt like two or even three books rather than one story. Ibeh studied under some greats, so far be it from me to challenge his skill but that might have been the problem; that the writing was too good, too mechanical. It was at once brilliant and exhausting. It was like he followed the rules too much. Show, not tell. Trust your readers, and such. Because we were left with unanswered questions. Injustice and cruelty will always make my blood boil. I read all of this book while terribly sick and relegated to my bed, unable to move. So maybe I carried Obiefuna’s pain more than I should. Or maybe Ibeh is just such a brilliant writer. The way he penned Obiefuna's struggle so that it became all of our struggle. So that we ask ourselves hard questions like why should we hate someone, discriminate again someone simply because we do not understand them? Simply because of their sexual identity? Confounding. Some parts of this made me deeply uncomfortable: particularly Senior Papillo’s scenes--some of which I still do not understand. Combining that kind of violence with sensuality was very disturbing. It’s possible that was exactly the point and that it was to show us nuance? But I don’t joke with abuse AT ALL so for me it was odd. I just didn’t see where the US repeal of DOMA came in; it was wildly out of place with the temperament and feel of the book, but perhaps I underestimate how much it resonated with the LGBTQ community in Nigeria? In any case; a brilliant debut by a brilliant man!
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