I started listening to Americanah on the commute to Sewing Camp. Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and clocking in at just under 17 and a half hours, I figured I’d speed it up to 1.25 like I usually do for my audio books and cut the listening time down a bit.
That lasted for less than a few paragraphs of the first chapter.
Like her sister, 10 year-old Three lets me know when she reads a book she likes and wants to recommend, but she shares fewer books – although the number may increase as she sees me reading her picks. One of her recent and rare recommendations was Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
When I was in college, I took an American Lit class with a new teacher. He had been hired upon the retirement of a beloved professor and I disliked him simply because he wasn’t his predecessor.
The only thing I remember from the class was the day our professor asked a white student to read a passage from a Flannery O’Connor book that contained the N-word. The room was tense, and a Black student in the back of the room (the only one?) walked out when our fellow student said the word.
We also had a Toni Morrison book assigned that semester.
As part of my goal to feature a title each month by a person of color, I just wrapped up Woman of Color, by LaTonya Yvette.
Part of me is embarrassed to feature this book – not because it wasn’t beautiful and well written. Instead, it’s because, even though Yvette doesn’t say so, I don’t completely feel like this book was for me, because while I’m a sister in womanhood, but I’m not a Sister.
It’s a theme, not feeling like I belong. It has everything to do with me and my own insecurities.
In that regard, this was the perfect book to read.
It took me so long to read this book that some of the photos I included in this post are from April, almost two months after I started reading the book.
I finished it at the end of July.
How good could it be if it took me so long to read?
Well, I was savoring it.
