bennysbooks's Reviews (668)

Thoughtful and enlightening discussions very much weighed down by construction. Several other readers described this collection as 'uneven' and I couldn't put it better myself. I often felt lost, either in attempting to determine exactly what the author was arguing for/against, or how whatever he was discussing related to the point he was trying to make. I couldn't tell if he was being intentionally ambiguous or if he had gotten lost along the way, swept up in his own writing. I definitely learned a few things from this book, but it was a bit of a bewildering reading experience. 

Wow. This book will stay with me forever. As other reviewers have pointed out, if you are looking for/expecting a tale about mermaids, you are bound to be disappointed. It is so much more than that - a very intense and visceral examination of intergenerational trauma, of oral history, of how much one person can hold, of individuality vs. collectivity, of the evil of white supremacy and colonialism, of revenge, of moving forward. The atmosphere is striking. The wajinru live in the deep ocean, and the storytelling mimics the feeling of the deep - it is heavy, unsettling, sometimes dizzying or shadowy, but also extremely beautiful.