Misty Bloom Book Club Ada Ihenachor

Welcome to the Misty Bloom Book Club! Hi, it's Ada. Hope you're taking good care of yourself and doing well. We’re on episode 2 already? Can you believe it? Thanks for sticking with me. It’s just gonna get better and better. In this episode I will be reviewing Season Of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. Let’s get into it!

So the reason I selected this book was because I wanted to read a book by a northern nigerian author. Perhaps you know this already, but umm, most of your best known Nigerian authors, including yours truly, are southeners. This novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms is set in northern nigeria against the backdrop of Hausa culture and Islamic conventions of behavior. So this totally fit the bill.
Let’s start with a summary. Season of Crimson Blossoms follows a forbidden romance between 55 year old Binta, a respectable Muslim widow and Reza, the local weed dealing overlord who also moonlights as a political thug.

And clearly, with this taboo type relationship there’s bound to be drama, shenanigans, secrets, lies, implications and consequences for not only Binta and Reza, but also for their families, and for the wider community. So I was excited to see how this would all play out.

But before I dive into my review, let me introduce you properly to Binta and Reza to help contextualize the rest of my review. I’ll start with Binta. Like I said, Binta is a widow. She's tragically lost her husband and her first born son to socio political circumstances which are endemic to Nigeria and maybe even particularly the northern nigerian experience. The book interestingly is set sometime during the first ever attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group and there are some references to that happening in the background.

But anyway back to Binta. She lives with her 8 year old granddaughter, Ummi, love that name, Ummi, and her 16 year old niece, Faiza whose father and brother were murdered in one of the many religious riots that plague northern nigeria. On the other hand, Reza, Binta’s lover is also a victim of a society that quite frankly and sadly sees him as disposable and has thrown him away. He is a 25 year old criminal with serious mommy issues. And I’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Ok, let’s just jump into what I thought was successful about this novel.
First thing - This is an accomplished novel and does not read like a debut effort. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a writer who's not an amateur. He is not new to this. The author came across as fully formed, self assured, and has a clear and unhesitating perspective.

To me, the author shows off prose that is observant and thoughtful and there is a maturity to the writing. This novel contains some beautifully written prose which I will read to you to underscore what I’ve just said.

For example on page 123, the author writes, "...the two bus drivers were standing by the door, arms hanging by their sides. One was Yoruba and the other Kanuri, but Reza thought they looked alike; the same worn faces, the same sweat-stained jumpers, and the same strained eyes. Occupational siblings."

What I just read shows off the author's strong observational skills and appropriate use of metaphor which separates amateurs from professionals.

A second strength of this novel is the interrogation of Hausa and Islamic norms. For example, this novel explores a custom in which mothers are disallowed from calling their firstborn children by name or being affectionate toward them. Or even acknowledging their later born children.
This is a custom that I'd never heard of and I found myself upset by it and responding viscerally to it. But it was also very intriguing. And I loved that the author interrogated this part of the culture while also handling it with tenderness. love love loved it. It gave not only a deeper insight into this dare I say questionable custom but it also has real consequences for the characters' lives.

I appreciated that the author didn’t

Hey hey hey, it's Ada. how are you doing? I hope you're taking good care of yourself and doing well.

In this episode of The Misty Bloom book club I am going to be reviewing What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. You ready? Let's go into the clubhouse.

Before I launch into my review of what we lose by Zinzi Clemmons, I want to talk a little bit about honesty. So grab your coffee, water, wine, whatever your drink of choice is, sit back and relax. Because it's about to get real. So there's this great advice that I’ve seen floating around the internet. I’ve seen two versions of the same advice and I don’t know who to originally attribute the quotes to but if you do know, let me know. Okay, so the first quote is truth without love is brutality. And the second quote is honesty without compassion is cruelty. So both of these quotes are essentially saying the same thing. And it's stuck with me because honesty is a virtue. And that is unquestioned. We are taught from a young age not to lie, to always speak truth to power, we are taught honesty is the best policy. There's no negotiating honesty. We should all strive for honesty as one of the greatest virtues to pursue and practice. However, honesty is not an excuse for us to hurt people. You know in the exercise of being blunt there's no need for us to administer blunt force trauma. There has to be a way, and I'm learning this as well, to be honest without inflicting harm on someone. So finding a balance between being honest and truthful but also couching the honesty and truth in the way that minimizes harm.
So why am I bringing this up? No, I'm not taking a detour from talking and being about books to becoming a virtue guru. Although if that pays more I might reconsider. I still want everyone, including myself, to be kind. It makes for a better world and a gentler existence when we're all kind to each other. But the reason I was bringing up the whole honesty and truth cruelty brutality thing is because I thought about perhaps not doing reviews for books that I didn't enjoy reading but I also think that's completely unrealistic. You know, sort of pandering to the whole if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all. Which to me can sometimes be a cowardly piece of advice in my opinion because it is taking the path of least resistance. If you're willing to do the work you can always find something nice to say. It's a little bit passive and kinda wack to just absolve yourself of the responsibility of saying nothing at all. Rather than plumbing the depths to finding the good about someone or a situation. Also the podcast would start to come across as fake because after a while you'd notice that I love absolutely everything that I read. Which is impossible. Life is not just a pond of lilies. It would not give The Misty Bloom Book Club any sort of dimension, I would not be a reliable source of literary commentary, critique, or appreciation. You guys are smart. You would pick up on the artifice that I'd be putting out. And even as a published author, I'm still growing and always learning to be a better writer and seeing the work of others, where their novels shine and where they fail, helps to sharpen my own craft. And the bottom line is that it is immature to avoid conversations that are difficult or uncomfortable. And, like you, I also want to challenge myself to be honest without being brutal.

So now that I've given you my whole spiel on honesty and brutality, let me start my review of What We Lose with a quick and dirty overview. See what I did there?

What We Lose is written in the first-person, the I, and follows Thandi who's born and raised in Pennsylvania to a South African mother and an American father. Partway through the novel, Thandi’s mother is diagnosed with cancer and very unfortunately passes away. And the novel transforms into a meditation on dealing with terminal illness, grief, and loss. So going into what we lose by Zinzi Clemmons, I had high hopes f

Hi guys, this is Ada, I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and doing well. So welcome members of the Misty Bloom Book Club to your first bonus episode. You guys make it possible for me to keep this podcast alive so thank you and enjoy. You deserve this. By the way bonus episodes are ad-free because you guys already make the episode possible with your sponsorship so thank you again. So far this season, we’ve made pit stops in inner city America, northern Nigerian, south Africa and you guys, I thought you know what? Let’s escape the world entirely for a little while, there's a pandemic ravaging the world so we deserve this escape. So in this bonus episode, as you know, I’m gonna be reviewing Circe by Madeline Miller. 44.7And because you guys are members it’ll be even more fun to do this review because you have the reading list and have probably already read Circe...

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Hi! This is Ada, I  hope you‘re taking good care of yourself and doing well. So guys, I'm so proud to be taking you on this lit global journey with me and I can’t wait to go even more places with you. It’s only episode 4. And we’ve been to inner city US, northern Nigeria, South Africa, and today, we're returning to America. Native America that is. So, in this episode, I’ll be talking about Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog.  You ready? Lets get into it. 

So, Lakota Woman is Mary Crow Dog’s memoir . And if you remember from episode zero, I mentioned that in the Misty Bloom Book club I would be reviewing mostly fiction and on rare occasions would consider nonfiction. So I guess today is the rare occasion. It came early. This book reminded me a tiny little bit of Born A Crime by Trevor Noah. Not at all in terms of style or substance. They are very dissimilar in those regards because Born A Crime is Trevor Noah’s account of growing up in apartheid South Africa while Lakota Woman follows Mary Crow Dog’s story as an activist fighting for the rights of Native Americans. But my comparison here is in terms of Mary Crow Dog and Trevor Noah being compelling storytellers, not professional writers.
And so for that reason I'm not going to do a typical review of Lakota Woman. I feel like how do you qualitatively assess or critique somebody's lived experience. You really can't judge it, you know what I mean? 

And also these are people, Mary Crow Dog and Trevor Noah just trying to tell us an honest story of oppression, all that matters is that these are stories that we should all be paying attention to and be provoked into positive actions. They are not trying to be professional writers so it feels dishonorable to critique their style of writing. So, I'm just not gonna do it. 
Instead I'll take a different approach and just chat with you about the book, okay?

I think a great place to start this conversation is to ask who is a Native American? Because that's a question that always seems to keep popping up in public discourse. 
And Mary Crow Dog answers this question. She says, "I should make clear that being a full blood or breed is not a matter of bloodline, or how Indian you look or how black your hair is. The general rule is that whoever thinks, sings, acts, and speaks Indian is a skin, a full blood and whoever acts and thinks like a white man is a half blood or breed, no matter how Indian he looks."

This book covers Mary Crow Dog’s life in the seventies and it’s interesting how 30, 40 years later people still try to claim a Native American heritage even though they do not think, sing, act, or speak like a Native and do not have familiarity with native traditions. I wonder what Mary Crow Dog would have thought of today's world where people benefit from and will fully exercise not being seen in the world as Native but will claim being Native when it's convenient and profitable. So your classic case of eating your cake and having it too. I’ve seen that happen where the majority of their existence in society is as an oppressor because of course, of the privileges attached to whiteness and then they switch over to oppressed when they wanna benefit from a minor advantage of their native heritage. So basically wanting to participate in the scarce wins but participate in zero of the struggle, pain and bloodshed that has to occur for those tiny wins. I've seen people do this. I find it to be pretty dark and disturbing. 

But moving along, I also wanna say that it felt like a treasure and a privilege to read this book. I felt like Mary Crow Dog was like letting me or us, since y’all are listening to this, into a sacred people and tradition that we do not deserve to know about but she is generous enough to share her people’s customs with us. In this case, obviously Lakota which is part of the Sioux people.
 Each chapter in this book starts with a saying or a poem or the lyrics of songs by select Native American pe

Episode Notes

Hey guys, how are you doing? I hope you're taking good care of yourself and doing well. 
In this episode, I will be reviewing What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah. Are you ready? Cos I am. Let’s go clubbing! This book is a short story collection. So first things first, before I launch into my review, I’m gonna tell you about my beef with short story collections. I don't typically read them. And the reason I don’t read short stories is because I don't feel like I get enough time with the characters or enough time to sink my teeth into the character’s stories before I'm being dragged off into another story. It feels like speed dating. And for this reason Short story collections have always felt unsatisfying to me. So I usually avoid them. 
Something else that I don't like about short stories, is that usually not always, but usually the endings never give any resolutions. So I'm speaking of a true resolution though not the resolution that I want. Let me explain. For example, I, just like most people, typically yearn for a happy ending to stories. But even where I don't get a happy ending, I want some sort of closure. So even where I don't get the happy ending that I want I will admire the alternative ending. I respect the alternative ending. I will think that it's brave of the author to choose the alternative ending. I may even concede that the alternative ending was the better ending. But on the other hand, I also think it is cowardly for a writer to choose no ending, to leave the story unresolved. And I feel like short story writers are typically guilty of this and short stories give writers a cop out from any sort of true ending or closure. Short story writers are notorious for jumping off the story and leaving you hanging with some intentionally esoteric ending, with some fill in the blanks with your own ending. Personally I find it gutless, weak, pathetic and I don't see anything to be admired with a lack of resolution in storytelling. And short stories are often guilty of this. So there’s my rant and now that’s out of the way.
But first I’ll give you a teaser of the book. The stories tackle domestic abuse, untreated ptsd and its effects on a family, troubled teenagers, ghosts, domestic and sexual abuse. So this review is going to be a little bit different than the reviews of novels. Because this is a short story collection so we are not following the same characters from beginning to end, we're not following the same narrative arc, the themes change from story to story, and so forth. 
So here’s what I loved about What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky. Fortunately in what it means when a man falls from the sky, most of the stories are well resolved. This does not mean Happy Endings or Bad Endings it just means there's closure. Most of the stories don't leave you intentionally hanging by the end. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky is gorgeously written. The author's sentences are so economical it's a thing of stunning beauty. Lesley Nneka Arimah says the most with the least possible amount of words. I'll read from the first story called The Future looks good  and this is from on page 2. But before I read it, the context here is that a step mother puts a boy out of his home. Got it? Ok here we go… "The boy is 15 and returns from the market to find his possessions in two plastic bags on the front door step, he doesn't even knock to find out why or to ask where he's supposed to go but squats with other unmothered boys in an abandoned half-built bungalow where his two best shirts are stolen and he learns to carry his money with him at all times. He begs, he sells scrap metal, he steals, and the third comes so easy to him it becomes his way out. He starts small, with picked pockets and goods snatched from poorly tended market stalls. He learns to pick locks, to hotwire cars, to finesse his sleight-of-hand." See how she very quickly describes how t

Episode Notes

Hi its Ada. I hope you are taking good care of yourself and doing well. In this episode, I will be reviewing Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.
Ok, guys 2 quick things you have brought to my attention which I'll address real quick. First I know I usually say the author’s full name throughout all the episodes but it’s intentional to you know put respeck on their name as is spelled out on the book cover. My thinking is that that’s how the author wants to be addressed. And that’s that. I”m not gonna call them Jennifer or Angie or Abubakar or Zinzi.  We’re not bffs. It’s really that simple.
Something else that I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not is I usually avoid mentioning if the book is award winning or whatever. And it’s not to diminish the award or a failure to acknowledge. After all that information is publicly available anyway. The reason I try to avoid mentioning awards or literary prizes where possible is to refrain from making any false distinctions between award winning books and otherwise. Because while awards are incredible especially for minority writers. Awards bring more publicity to the book. Just like you know an oscar winning movie, gets more attention and viewership. Or in the case of books, more readership. People make buying decisions around prizes and awards and all that great stuff. So awards are extremely helpful for writers, especially less visible, minority writers. They can use all the visibility they can get. Also the awards come with considerable monetary compensation which is phenomenal for writers because writing is not like your typical 9-5 guaranteed income stream. Umm look at me. I’m podcasting. So, overall back to my point is that while awards are extremely useful and in many cases, actually necessary, and trust me, I’d love to win a couple of them, but honestly to me, awards are not the final or comprehensive determiner of what makes good literature. Literature like all other forms of art is subjective.  There are so many magnificent books out there that could go toe to toe and even surpass award winning books by a clear mile. So that’s the reason I don’t bring awards up. Unless of course it’s mine. To me, great literature is great literature, whether or not it’s award winning.
So, let’s start as we typically do with a teaser of what Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is about. Kintu is an intergenerational epic saga set in Uganda. So guys yeah, we off to Uganda in this episode. East Africa, baby! Quick sidebar. My claim to fame with Uganda is I was on a flight once that stopped in Entebbe airport to refuel and pick up passengers. So I’ve been on Ugandan soil  or maybe more accurately, a Ugandan tarmac.
Anyway this book kicks off in 1750 in the kingdom of Buganda (so the pre-colonial Uganda) Here we meet Kintu, after whom this book is obviously named. Kintu is a powerful and wealthy man, He is the Ppookino or governor of the Buddu province within the Buganda kingdom and is married to identical twins. Kintu has a lot of children, many of whom are twins. And he also adopts a boy, Kalema,  who is the child of a Tutsi immigrant, Ntwire, who lives in  their community. Kintu loves Kalema just like he does his biological children but something happens between Kintu and Kalema. And in response Ntwire, the Tutsi immigrant aka Kalema’s biological father, I hope you’re following this?, lays a curse on Kintu and his future generations. And so the book follows the manifestation of the curse on Kintu’s descendants.  As I was reading this novel, very early on I saw the obvious influence of Chinua Achebe's seminal Things Fall Apart. And not because of the pre-colonialism aspects of Kintu but also because of that pivotal relationship between Okonkwo and Ihemefule in Things Fall Apart echoed in the relationship between Kintu and Kalema. Are you guys still following me?  My suspicions were confirmed on page 312 where the author references Thi