Name: What We Lose
ISBN: 9780008245955

Zinzi Clemmons

A short, intense and profoundly moving debut novel about race, identity, sex and death – from one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35

What We Lose

"Raised in Pennsylvania, Zinzi Clemmons's heroine Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor--someone, or something, to love"--

A Novel

Shona Tiger

Mm. A rather odd one; fairly enjoyable by the end (especially taken as a whole), but also quite unlikeable in parts. Around 2.5 stars for me.

Stefanie  Uwah

This book tried to do too much with not enough time. I can deal with not liking a protagonist. What I can't deal with is not understanding the protagonist. She was very aloof and unpredictable. It's obvious that the author is a great technical writer but this fell extremely flat.

Edit: I'm adding a star to this review because I think listening to it on audio added to my overall confusion and lack of understanding of the character. It may have been a bit easier to grasp if I had read the physical book instead. I think books that have additions like newspaper articles and various other bits of info besides the actual story are very difficult to translate via audio without it being confusing. That doesn't mean that they SHOULDN'T have an audiobook component. I just think more work needs to be done to make the transitions seamless. Maybe including the alt-text alternative to pictures that lets the listener know that the portion we are about to read comes from a newspaper op-ed (It has been a while since I've read this one so maybe the audiobook did this and I completely forgot?? If so, oops!)

Bambi Ard

I checked this out from my library on a whim a few days before Mother's Day- books about complicated mother/daughter relationships always draw me in, and it felt appropriate considering the time. 

Turns out this book was exactly what I needed right now: after reading two very humorous, light-hearted novels, the slow-paced heaviness of "What We Lose" was refreshing and palette-cleansing. Clemmons took a very difficult and honest look at grief, and how it can impact individuals and break down family units. I often felt grieved myself while reading, which either speaks for my sensitivity or Clemmons' skill. Probably both.

I appreciated the way this was written: the bite-sized looks at Thandi's psyche, combined with Clemmons' simple but insightful prose, made the book easy to consume. The writing was a very good balance of "straight-forward, with the occasional sentence to take your breath away."

Though grief (how it feels and changes your life, how people cope or don't cope with it, the vague probability of healing from it) is the main focus of "What We Lose", the book also dipped its feet in the effects of capitalism, classism, and misogynoir and colorism within the Black community- all discussions that I enjoyed and appreciated.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

Madhuri Gubbala

“An orphan was always a person without parents, without roots. I had one parent, and one was not none.”

This is a coming-of-age story about a young African-American woman, Thandi, who just lost her mother. The story covers more than just grief, bereavement and mourning. There is love, family dynamics, deep friendships and more. We see her struggle with her identity as a white-passing black girl in Pennsylvania and her efforts to stay connected with her roots in Johannesburg. I loved her friendship with Aminah and how it grew over the years. Thandi’s relationship with her father was not the easiest and it is portrayed quite honestly. I liked it overall, highly recommend!

celeste

Wow.

I have no words for this. I'm still crying because of how relatable this was. At first I thought I was reading a memoir because of the way that it was written; I felt like Zinzi was pouring out her life instead of the character's life, which I think was part of the charm of What We Lose, you could never fully know whether you were reading about the author's life or about the actual characters of the novel. I couldn't help but identify with so many of the doubts that Thandi had about motherhood and identity.

 
  'I do not see the mother with her child as either more morally credible or more morally capable than any other woman. A child can be used as a symbolic credential, a sentimental object, a badge of self-righteousness. I question the implicit belief that only "mothers" with "children of their own" have a real stake in the future of humanity'


It was also heartbreaking to read about her mother's loss, and her constant struggle with her identity: neither white nor black; neither American nor African.


  'when I called myself black, my cousins looked at me askance. They are what is called coloured in South Africa -mixed race- and my father is light-skinned black. I looked just like my relatives, but calling myself black was wrong to them. Though American blacks were cool, South African blacks were ordinary, yet dangerous. It was something they didn't want to be'


This novel was hard to read at times, because it hit a little too close to home for so many reasons, and so many of the issues raised in here still linger with me. To think this was only Zinzi's debut novel! She has a way with words that make you feel so immersed in what you are reading that you don't even know you have devoured the entire novel. I can't wait to see what else she is gonna come up with in the future.

Sameer Vasta

What We Lose reads like a collection of essays and vignettes, but together, they form a coherent story of someone who loses her home—only in this case, home is not a place, but a person. What does life look like when you become homeless (personless, motherless)? What do the fragments of this homeless life say about a life as a whole?

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

Renee Blankenship

Have you ever read a book and had to repeatedly remind yourself it wasn't a true story? That you weren't reading a memoir? That the beautifully written passages were works of fiction and not someone's own struggle? This is how I felt while reading What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. I'm not sure if it is because I've been reading more memoirs than usual lately or if the writing is just so honest that it was hard to differentiate real from not but I constantly had to remind myself that this was fiction. It was that good.

Told in short vignettes, chapters that sometimes were no longer than a sentence, Clemmons created a sense of reading something incredibly personal. Almost as if I had stumbled upon the diary of Thandie, the main character. Her story of loss (her mother) as well as the pull between two cultures, her own skin color (not black, not white), her place in life and in love, as a mother and a wife and then not. Oh gosh. There was so much happening here, in this short book. The glimpse into Thandie's world, her struggles and the loss of her mother (I can't even imagine) gave me pause time and again to think. It brought to mind the quote from To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

Zinzi Clemmons did an excellent job making me feel like I was reading a true story, she made me question what I would do in similar circumstances and left me considering life from a different perspective. I have nothing in common with the main character in this book, with her struggles or her setbacks, her losses or achievements but actively putting myself in her shoes while I read through this short work of fiction made me appreciate Clemmon's writing all the more!

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in reading something a bit different, looking for a different perspective on loss and finding yourself in a world where there isn't a box for you to fit in. The vignettes of Thandie's life created all the more a sense of peeking into someone's personal diary.

 Bruna Acioly Leão

A beautiful exploration of what it means to grieve and the different ways in which we might experience it.

Francine Corry

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust “The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue “Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker “Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine “Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home.” —Buzzfeed “Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey.” —Essence From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

What We Lose

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