coolfoolmoon's Reviews (357)

I didn't like this sequel better than the first but I understand what Achebe was going for. The culture of the people changed so much in what is assumed to be about 50 years, and even the titles are very fitting too, very specific to each of the mens' stories. Not sure what the third book will bring but I liked those details at least.

This one is more character driven than plot driven, unlike the first book, but not in the sense that character takes actions and motivates the plot, more like plot happens and character reacts to it. (It's a bit of both but in both books neither character really has a personality... or a backbone. But that's a type of review I don't actually get on here to write, so I'll save it for someone who cares to do that kind if stuff.)

For a moment I thought this was a pro-choice book and the reason he was in court was because he had sex out of wedlock and the girl died from complications with the abortion, but no! Once again I was disappointed by my own hopes for what the book would be. (This happened with TFA first.) I only add this note because I read this shortly after Roe v Wade was overturned and I was like "Damn, what are the odds I read this 60 something years after it was originally published and the story it's portraying is something that still happened?" I guess it does, but alas, that's not where the book was heading. Oh well.

My eyes flew across the page. For once I have nothing to say.

"There is no progess in evolution, no march toward perfection."

I love that this book starts off with a brief summary of the history of Jewish people and the Torah. I would've loved if it stayed focused on Jewish people, but then that wouldn't've been accurate. In the section where we learn about Augustine, you really get the sense of "Oh yeah, now I get why Christianity is the way it is, how it devolved or spiraled into an extreme fanaticism that still plagues many people to this day." And because of that, that's why the author stuck with Christian interpretations and how Adam and Eve as concepts / mythos / people evolved. I'm not sure how Jewish people, or even Muslims (but they're barely mentioned), view the story, whether they see it as absolute historical fact or an allegory, but I know for a fact Adam and Eve can't have evolved in their communities the same way it has in Christianity.

This book really has every thing I love / am interested in. Or I should say, elements of history I'm very familiar with, whether they apply to me directly or I've learned a lot about them. From the history of misogyny to the history and religious justifications for slavery to the conquest of the New World to how Santa Monica, California got its name. Even how witch hunts became a thing. This book has everything!!! Even things you don't think are connected. The author is amazing with weaving history together whether it was how one man's abuse of power 1600 years ago lead to how we think and interact with the world now to the then mind bending idea of pterodactyls, he makes all the history feel present and certainly alive.

So many slurs.

So many slurs a racial slur was used when the word muck or gunk should've been used. (That one wasn't intentional but still I noticed it and went 😐why?)

I mean if I had a nickel for every time I reread a book that was required reading in my middle and high school English classes featuring a character who was a disabled boy who had epilepsy and his best friend was a big jock / brute and slurs pertaining to the boy's disability kept being tossed around, I'd have 2 nickels! Which isn't a lot but!!! It's weird it happened twice right?!!

Anyway Kevin reminds me of my high school best friend. That's both a good and bad thing, mostly good, and it does make me miss her more. She's not dead, I just haven't spoke to her.

Another nice note, I could still hear my 6th grade teacher's voice when I read this 😊 Isn't that something?

This came out when I was in high school and even then people were making fun of her. Recently I saw a video of her reading a poem (the one on page 101) and thought it was kinda cute and mostly corny, so I figured like the Brits say "Wot IS all this then?" What's all the hullabaloo, what's all the fuss about, why don't people like her? I should find out for myself.

So anyway I get it. Very corny, very basic, I still think it's a waste of a tree and a waste of paper. But not necessarily a waste of ink... Plenty of the pages are pretty moving. Sometimes basic is resounding and renowned for a reason. Now that I've read this though you can really see the influence she and others like her have had on pop culture in general. Is that good or bad? The answer is yes. (But mostly it's bad.)

I don't like making reviews like this but here I goes. The "poems" aren't really rhythmic or present with the flow of things I usually associate with the term "poetry." Like, yes, arguably a lot of poetry is like this but I personally don't like that. Just because you put several line breaks in something that in any other case would be considered a run on sentence I'm supposed to clap for you? And there are some instances where even when there is a line break it's still a run on sentence? No punctuation at all girl? Not even a comma? An em dash? A semi colon? It's confusing. Pick a struggle.

On a positive note, there's kind of a storyline here. This book couldve been improved if the "poems" weren't placed in the same theme in random order but in a way that better connected them, because it's clear many of the poems are about different people, not just one ex or how that ex connects with a parent or family member. All those people have different feelings and memories attached to them. But alas. Rupi Girl, you'll never be Sandra Cisneros. You'll never be Mitski Miyawaki's Magnificent Musical Melodrama now available on Spotify.

Through the entire first section of the book and the first chapter of the second section, I just kept thinking: Misogyny will be the death of men. At least I thought that's where the book was going. It should've went that way.

There's something I hate, or dislike, about classic books which is the tendency to have unnecessary filler pages. Like they were getting paid by the word or something. And I say filler specifically because I love me some slice of life stories. I'm the kind a girlie that absolutely lives to see people figuring out what food they're gonna put on their grocery list because they don't know what to make for dinner, okay? But most of this book is just filling the pages up. Now I haven't read enough classics to say all of them do this, but I hate it either way. Scenes and moments with almost or literally no importance to the rest of the story. Maybe I hate it so much because that's how I wrote stories when I was 13. But hey I'm over it now!

It's hard to rate such a tome but it makes me wish for a book that is about this length, but for every era or decade or so. Because a book about the trials and tribulations and moments of joy and excitement and real life history and everything else in between for Black people every now and again and not just something that chronicled, at the time, over 300 years of stories would be very cool. Very nice. Very much needed methinks.

Very odd gross weird how much the book talks about loving America and how we built it and put our blood sweat love pain and tears into a country that has never and will never love us back. Patriotism is already pretty gross but to add Black in front of that makes my head spin. Many many notes.

I would've liked more inclusion of those outside of the United States but that's a prompt for another book I suppose. And the inclusion of those stories of loving America really excludes the many, many, vast majority of stories I'm sure there are about true Black independence. The author/editor does acknowledge there are different types of stories in the book and there for sure are but being from America isn't the thing that makes us African American. At least I dont think so anymore. Yes, this was written in a different era but there's something else, something more that bonds us. Community. I'm thinking of the story by bell hooks in the Community section.

Also wow 651 pages in and the first mention of gay people wow. wow wow wow. Yeah I'd like another edition of this book. Or another volume or something more inclusive. There's a lot of the Black community, the Black American diaspora clearly left out of this 922 page book.

And girl why the hell, why in the absolute FUCK is the Self Esteem setion 30 pages but the Work section is 60? Do you hear yourself?!

That all being said though, it's a pretty worthy book. Good, I imagine, for if you have a kid and want them to know their history so when you put them to bed you read them a story or a poem or two.

Warning: DO NOT rent this from the library. You won't be able to finish it as soon as you think and they WILL put a hold on your account because they think you stole / lost the book!!!

This is what those trendy bisexuals wish they mean when they say "he was written by a woman." Son is the only man this could ever apply to!!!

Something clicked for me as I was reading Song of Solomon, that I think really unlocked whatever was holding me back from fully understanding Ms. Morrison's books. Or maybe I just didn't like her first two, but something definitely clicked midway through the third. The same thing sparked again very early into this fourth book, and again I knew I'd love it! Ms. Morrison don't miss!!!

Spoilers for the end,

I like that they didn't end up together, but only because I'm a sucker for people returning to their roots, especially so if the roots have something to do with nature.

I'd like to reiterate what I said in my review of Pet. Which I will not repeat here but it still stands. I liked, nay, LOVED Vengeance. And the worldbuilding in this sequel / prequel is just so rich. Not that they have to, but Emezi could run wild with this world alone and never be broke again. It's so beautiful, it's so refreshing. Pet was so warm and sweet and this was so dark and sultry... Bitter if I may. But both books, despite how different they feel, smell, sound, despite how different the in-universe world is barely a generation later, both taste like eating really good dark chocolate. For me. I say this because I love dark chocolate. And I did eat a few while reading, but because the world already made me think of the flavor! What I mean is the world itself is rich, flavorful, colorful, and even though the books are different they have the same heart.

Emezi has a real talent, a real beauty in absorbing me into these words. There was one page I gasped at least 10 times, just one page! And throughout the whole book I was so giddy. But can you blame me? A straight (presenting(?)) couple so gay they grow to have a trans daughter? I love it here! We have no choice but to stan! If there's a third book I'm sending Emezi my paycheck the day the book is announced.

I hate to invoke a harmful right-wing phrase when talking about this very Black book of wonderful poetry, but the inclusion of Claude McKay's poems in particular (The Tropics in New York, Outcast, and Flame-Heart) really made me think about Reject Modernity: "African American", Embrace Tradition: "Negro, American Negro, Black, etc." There's something so liberating about not just remembering the comment people use in diaspora war discussions, that: "The difference between you and me is a boat stop." But really, truly accepting it, welcoming it, embracing it. It's true, but it's also not true. Different people groups from as far up as Senegal, as far down as Angola, as far inland as the Congo and Volta rivers, all headed to different areas where they probably connected with people from the same areas as they were before. But then, look at us now. All descendants of them. All those survivors, who survived to have kids and so on and now we fight over what we should be allowed to call ourselves. But Claude McKay's poem made me long for Home. I'm from California. I've been to the South twice, no where near where mangoes could grow, and nowhere near were my grandparents who were the last of my family to live in the south lived, two of whom left too young to even remember, but I know what home is supposed to feel like. That's universal. That's how I felt reading McKay's poems. And when I see black siblings from overseas, I don't think "Oh, they're black but they're not like me. Those are [insert country here] blacks." No! No fucking way! My first thought is. "Wow. Look at them! They're beautiful." Because honestly we are so beautiful, it's distracting, it makes me want to weep. But then I think really, "Wow. Look at our cousins." Look at our cousins who take inspiration from us here up North. More often than we think they do. Look at our cousins who go through the same shit we go through. It's just quieter. What makes a Black person in Mexico, or Cuba, or Dominica, or Uruguay not a Black American? It's the same continent? Semantics, I know, I know... But this book of poetry just reminded me of something I forgot I let go of back in my peak tumblr days, in 2014, when I was 14 and thought a whole lot differently than I do now. It doesn't matter what country you're in, or from, or going to. We're cousins. We're siblings. We're family. What you feel, I've felt. What we've felt, another one of us has already made a poem about. Isn't that lovely? We're Black. We're Negroes. We'll be free someday. While we catch our breath, let's read some poetry.