Skip to main content

 I am writing after a month, I seem to have lost touch with my writing, feel pretty clueless sometimes and wonder what I am doing with my time. It was fine for as long as I had talks and webinars going on, but suddenly I feel lost once again. So as a part of trying to do something useful with my time I read a book and reading a book means writing a review or my thoughts rather on the book I read, so here goes.

I read 'Purple Hibiscus' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Even though I finished reading it yesterday, I wasn't really in the frame of mind to write yesterday so I put it off and in retrospect it may have been a good thing because throughout today I kept having the feeling that I was somewhere else yesterday and I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't go anywhere, I was reading the book. I think it was well written book, with simple language and the narrative held my attention so much that I didn't want to do anything else, I just wanted to keep reading it. There were some moments were I felt so deeply emotional, I even cried a little, not the kind of crying where you just tear up but the kind where you feel this immense pain within and want to howl and cry, only, I didn't howl because I didn't want to alarm those around me. They were already sad to see me unhappy didn't want to add to their unhappiness even more. I wish I could go back to those parts once more and cry heart-fully. 

It brought up so many things from the past from me, things I have tried to tuck away safely in some remote corner of my mind trying hard not to think or remember them, but each time I remember them, the pain remains the same so it was understandable as to why I cried when I read the book I suppose. There are certain things I want to write about it but keep putting them off because of how painful it is to reminisce these things. I hope some day I find the courage and ability to put those feelings into words. 

Anyway, getting back to the book, I felt like I was a part of Kambili's world, sometimes I felt I was her, as I kept reading I felt like I was seeing them rather than reading them and I think that says a lot about the Author's writing style. The description of each scene was so beautifully captured in her writing, a lot of times too much description can put you off from reading further but this was the right balance. Having read Achebe's Things Fall Apart, I could see how the author brought in similar themes into this story as well. When I read the review at the end, I was so happy that I was able to draw those parallels, I even felt proud of myself for a brief moment for being able to do so without any prompting or previous information. 

I think the more I am reading Adichie's work and listening to her speeches, the bigger fan I am becoming of her, some of the issues that she raises resonate with me so much. I feel so happy and proud that I have similar views or questions that she raises. One such example is from her work, 'Dear Ijeawele' where she talks about the husband 'allowing' how we use that word so often and easily and why it so problematic. I wand to narrate one of personal experiences over here. It was about a year ago, when I was working for the elections on campus as part of ASA, we were working late in the night, it was past two in the night. One of the boys working with us asked me 'your husband allows you to stay out so late ah?' I was furious with that question, I didn't want to stir up a fight so I politely told him, 'my husband doesn't own me and he isn't my headmaster and I'm not his student that I should seek his permission for whatever I need to do'. I knew that had I been a guy I wouldn't have been asked that question, I would probably have been asked 'your wife doesn't get mad at you for being out so late ad leaving her alone?' Anyway, so when I read 'Dear Ijeawele' I was so pleasantly surprised and happy to see that she had written that same thing. 

It is truly motivating and reassuring to find such validation in the things we read and hear. Adichie's book, Purple Hibiscus also deals with themes that I have constantly had conflicts with and I really liked how she wrote the character Papa, it has so many layers, it is an important reminder of how things can be grey and not necessarily black and white, there's so much more to things than we see. I am consciously not writing too much about it because I really want to write about this someday, I hope I do. 

Right now my mind is filled with so many ideas to write about but no words to put them in. I expect that in time I will make some progress in translating these numerous ideas into writing.

That's all for today, oh I wanted to show off, I finished reading this book in one day, something I felt happy and proud about, it has been a while since I did that.     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I can feel myself drifting away from all the things I wanted to do, every time I try harder to stay on track it makes it so much more difficult to do them, and if I just stop trying, I am overcome with guilt which creeps up on me the moment I seem to lose focus and it weighs me down like a heavy burden on my shoulder. So basically I am stuck in a loop of trying to just take a break and feeling guilty and straying further away from my goals and aspirations. And sometimes when I contemplate hard about where things are going I go on a down an even more dangerous path and I am afraid of what would happen if I go there.  So I keep trying to shun the guilt and numb all feeling and escape to a place that doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. While I am able t do that when I am wide awake, I seem to have no control over what I dream, it taps me on my shoulder in my dreams and wakes me up so I don't sleep and keep pondering over what my life is going to be like. And that is one of the mos...
Post a Comment
Read more
Yesterday, I watched the movie Bombshell, it stirred up a lot of emotions for me while watching that movie, I couldn't hold  my tears back, while watching it, especially this particular scene, wherein there are women who were harassed by Roger years ago, and each of their experiences are played out one by one, it was very distressing to hear it, this was the scene that shook me. There very many others, but this particularly had some impact on me. It has never been easy for women to come into the workforce, women have always been a lopsided world, the way things work for men are different and different for women, you are put at a disadvantage right from the start even before you can begin, because you're a woman, it automatically is assumed that whatever you do, a man can do it better, it doesn't matter how good you are at the job. The first thing you're seen as is a sexual object more than a good worker, what ever the role may be, if someone helps you out in somethin...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beginning

As a young adult I have always wanted to be a writer, and i wrote a lot of stuff, which i wouldnt exactly call great, so i felt embarrassed about it and then i stopped and then i started to write again but, no longer with the same ease that i did earlier on, now I keep struggling to write, I keep getting stuck at every point, I don't know what to write about so I thought of taking it up as a challenge this year, to write at least 250 words every day, about anything, without worrying about how good or bad it is, and see how that might help me in honing my writing skills. I hope I am able to follow through on this and not leave it like I did before. Earlier I thought I could postpone one day's writing to another but that only makes it worse, so the important thing is to not keep any backlogs I suppose. Let's see where this takes me.  
Post a Comment
Read more