BOOKS! (And After Many Days) - proof

This book is the last advance reader's copy that I found up for grabs in the bookstore break room, and so with this review comes the symbolic end to an era that officially ended almost two months ago. Using a family tragedy as a vehicle for examining social strife, this novel beckons readers to revisit the violence and political upheaval of 1990s Nigeria.

And After Many Days by Jowhor Ile
(on sale February 16, 2016)

Paul is the eldest of three children in the middle class Utu household. One day in September 1995, he steps out of their house in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and never returns.Though the central conflict is this missing 17-year-old, And After Many Days is neither a crime novel nor a mystery novel. Rather than focusing on his family's efforts to find him, Jowhor Ile communicates the weight and distress of Paul's absence by immersing us in the life he and his family shared before he disappeared. And this is all told from the point of view of Ajie, the youngest child and the last person in the family that Paul talked to before he left the house for the last time. Ajie is greatly attached to his family, but his ideas don't always match theirs and he resents not being recognized as an individual more often.

Through Ajie's eyes we make a visit to the family village of Ogibah, which, more than three decades after independence from Britain, has to contend with big business filling colonial shoes. Relatives and fellows there constantly clash with an oil company that's destroying the Ogibah way of life through construction, land seizure, pollution, and bribes used to weaken local morale and resistance. Furthermore, the village people have little recourse when the company has the military-led government and the police on their side. In the cities, universities are shut down intermittently as students and faculty protest, often being intimidated or beaten back into place by police. People, especially young people, are disappearing. Those who resist, or call officials out on their corruption and hypocrisy, or complain too vocally, or are in the wrong place at the wrong time, or are just minding their own business but are still somehow a threat to or "in the way" of the powers that be. People are disappearing for any reason and no reason at all, and Paul is one of those people.

While he doesn't realize it at first, in the midst of these changing times Ajie is grappling with the loss of not only his brother, but also of society as he knows it to be. He is already unsettled by nature, and the events he witnesses only make him more so.  And After Many Days takes up the past, and this backward-looking story is framed by Ajie's latent rage. Ajie's angry about being last on the pecking order of his siblings, about classmates thinking they can punk him, about being punished for asking questions instead of receiving answers, about not being seen or heard, and about having what's most precious to him taken away and not being able to do anything about it. As he awaits his beloved brother's return, Ajie refuses to relent and never stops searching for him.

Favorite quote:

"But whatever there was to know about desire and its costs was beyond Ajie then. He was at that time completely passionate and completely pure. He imagined himself, his brother, and his sister to be people who would shoot into the world and burn, fiery arrows set free by their parents from their home here at number 11. They would love greatly and do useful things. Bibi would become rich and important and build houses and hospitals for the poor. Paul would simply change the world. But what would that cost?" (78).

Kindness is hard.

Trying to remember this. Cultivating kindness for yourself is hard when you've always conceptualized going easy on yourself as "being undisciplined", "not caring enough", "not doing enough", and "not trying hard enough". TUH. Self-compassion goes against nearly all that I know how to be, but I'm trying.

"Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life." How are your New Year's...
Posted by Project Happiness on Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Talking with Yasmin 12 (FINAL)

I'd decided that today would be our last session, though I wasn't going to tell Yasmin as much. The plan was to go one last time today just to see how it went and be sure, schedule an appointment for next week like always, and then just cancel in a few days and never come back.

Given the predicament that I'm in, I know I could use therapy. I need help, but I'm tired. I'm tired of leaving sessions feeling like I've wasted my time and my money. I considered asking Yasmin about making an appointment with one of the other psychiatrists in that office so I could give meds another try. See if that would make a difference. But especially following that awful appointment with Dr. B, I'm tired of having to introduce myself and my issues over and over, telling the same story about myself again and again. Most certainly, this feeling of stalled progress isn't all Yasmin's fault; I've found that usually if I feel like I've hit a wall in therapy, part of it is due to my impatience or unwillingness to make/stick to certain changes. I don't want to let my apathy take over and lead me to make another unwise decision, but then again I'm just so over this whole thing.

So I've concluded that... I don't know. (Haha, of course. I feel like everything in my life at present is a bunch of question marks heaped on top of each other to form one big, towering, stubborn "I don't know"). Today Yasmin was oddly quiet, I don't know why. Aside from a few questions she hardly said anything, and it was annoying because I'd finish saying what I had to say, and then I felt like I had to come up with something else to talk about just to fill the silence. I'm strongly considering never going back. Not because Yasmin's bad at what she does, she's not. She just doesn't seem to be working for me, and I'm tired.

That's where I am right now. My notes from today are short:

• Gotten real comfortable with having forgotten about my dad and pretending that he doesn't exist. He's become, literally, the furthest thing from my mind, and things are better this way. I like it. 
• Took a personality test at 16personalities.com. Says I'm type INFJ, "The Advocate". Must go back and consult these results, see if they might be useful.
• "You need to give yourself some more credit," so Yasmin says. But like, credit for what tho?

Take your time.

"You're a woman. By birthright, you're allowed to take your time." -Kamilah, pole & twerk instructor

BOOKS! (Why We Came to the City) - proof

This is the second-to-last uncorrected proof that I got from the bookstore break room, and it seemed mildly interesting. I'd wanted this book enough to take it for myself, but truthfully I wasn't all that excited to crack it open. When I looked it over  my first thought was, Great. Yet another work created about New York City, focusing exclusively on hip white 20-somethings. Woo. hoo. How. original. I almost stopped reading it because I assumed it'd be uninteresting, but this novel surprised me!

Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma
(on sale February 16, 2016)

My assumption when skimming the title and synopsis was that I'd be reading about this group of college friends and NYC transplants clumsily but earnestly following their dreams, while conquering their respective quarter-life crises during the Great Recession. The book is even punctuated by poetic interludes  ("Why We Came to the City", "Why We Left the City", and "The City That Is") about New York City and how living there has changed them. But this novel is also a little more serious than that. Readers are immersed in this group's long-standing friendship, and how each person's character, priorities, and disappointments are brought to the surface when they must collaborate to support one of them who is fighting cancer.

Part 1 introduces the characters and sets us up for this tragedy. We have Irene, an artist and assistant at an art gallery, with a suspicious spot under her left eye. We have her best girl friend Sara, a type-A editor and socialite. We have George, Irene's friend and Sara's boyfriend, an astronomer who likes to keep the peace. We have Jacob, George's poet bestie and the too-cool rebel of the group, known for his intelligent snark and strong opinions. And lastly there's William, an easygoing Korean-American investment banker and the only native New Yorker in this ensemble. He was a vague acquaintance of the group in college and is still madly in love with Irene after all this time, despite not knowing her or any of the friends that well. Irene is the one that the other four have to rally around, and let me tell you. What sold me on this book is how Jansma writes about her passing. He so craftily and delicately weaves two moments together that we're not sure which one is real until the end. First he has us follow Irene as she escapes the hospital, refusing to die there, and walks freely through the city accompanied by winds. And then he splices that with scenes of her friends being called to the hospital to decide whether or not to take her off life support, revealing that Irene is actually in a coma. And rather than following Irene's escape, we've actually been walking with her through the last moments of her life, in her mind.

Part 2 Gives each of the remaining characters a chapter to meander through the year and some change that follow Irene's passing. I won't say any more than that; I feel like I've already given away a lot. What I will say is that as much as Sara, George, Jacob, and William loved Irene and as close as they'd become, turns out there was a lot they didn't know about her. Like where she came from. Who and where her family was, if she even had any. Her real name. She carried those secrets with her to the grave. As settled as she seemed to be, as hard as she loved the people around her, she was a drifter who belonged to no one. But what's redeeming about all this is that her friends loved her back so fiercely that they didn't feel the need to ask too many questions. And no one in the group can completely get over her once she's gone.

So I would say that Why We Came to the City is more a novel about friendship more than anything else. There's the cancer subplot and the relentless pressure of the quarter-life crisis. There's frequent emphasis on the meaning and function art, poetry, literature. But it's Irene and what she means to each of her friends that allows them to pull together when they need to, and to keep moving forward when it's time to do so. I didn't have high expectations, but this is really a beautiful book. At least give it a good flip-through once it's released!

Favorite quotes:

"William, you are a person! You possess, within you, a personality. A personality that can─no, which must─be expressed in the things that surround you!...They mean that you aren't a page twelve, William Cho!" (89).

"and I guess it sucks that it's always going to be a little harder for you than for other people, and you'll have to stay on your medication, and sometimes you're still going to see a homeless guy on the street or something and it's going to break you heart, and you'll want to crawl under a rock somewhere and hide everything good that you've got to offer from the world because it's going to seem like the world doesn't deserve it, but I promise it does─" (308-9).

Priya.

Priya was 24 and had gone through some things. Eventually she got tired of fighting, so she prepared a letter and a fundraising page to help her family after the fact. And now she's gone.

I am 23, and I am devastated. Because I read the story and her letter, and I've been exactly where she's been. What happened to her in her life may have differed from what happened to me in mine, but I know those depths. I know how encompassing that darkness can be. It's hard to recover from hopelessness. I was up at 6:30 this morning crying to my mom about this. I don't think I've cried this hard for someone I don't know since Charleston 9. It's just like when I learned about Karyn Washington's passing. It hurts.

It hurts because she didn't make it. Like she was me or could've been me, and her not making it means "we" or "one of us" didn't make it, and I really wish she could've stuck around. I wish she would've made it.

I don't know you, but I love you, my sister Priya. I know how much you were hurting and how hard you tried. And even though you didn't make it through, you left behind something good and beautiful. Peace be upon you and your family. Rest.

Delayed. And that's okay.

Up until recently, I was ready to get out of here. Ever since high school, really, all I could think about was leaving, moving far away to another country, staying there, and leaving everything here behind. In college, especially leading up to graduation, all I wanted was to get up and go, to move on to the next place.

But then I didn't have a next place to go to, and so now I'm still here.

And even though I still want to go. Even though there is still something in me pulling me outward, as there's always been. I'm afraid to leave. I'm just now realizing that leaving everything behind means really leaving everything behind. Starting over means really starting over. I desperately want out, but I'm not as ready to seize it as I thought I was.

So for now I'm still here with Ma and my dog. I'm going to stay and soak up all the love and warmth  that I can, gather all the comfort to hold inside me that I can. Until I'm a little more ready. Until I can trust myself a little more to be alone and do things on my own, to sustain good thoughts and good feelings. I doubt I'll ever be all-the-way ready. Hugh Laurie says you're never completely ready for anything, and the planner in me grudgingly can't deny that. I don't know when it'll be. Hopefully it's soon; as much as I love my two anchors, I know there's nothing substantial for me here. But I guess that's between me and God. We'll see.

In the meantime, at least now I'm a little more ready to stop feeling so guilty about being "stuck" here. Delays shouldn't be as shameful as I've made them out to be.