Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - Vagabonds!

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Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde

14 reviews

nojerama's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

OK, I absolutely LOVED this. The best way I can describe it is whimsical eldritch horror, set in a world of magical realism. It deals hugely with themes of queerness and being an outsider in your own body and home, and how those around you try to force and mould you into their shape. How you can escape that and find your people who will love you as you are. Phenomenal book.

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thebookgiraffe's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

laurareads87's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

4.5. I am so glad that JesseOnYoutube chose this as a group read for Blackathon2024 as I may never have found this text at all otherwise. I don’t know what I expected when I picked up Vagabonds! It wasn’t this, but the way Osunde captures the spirit of Lagos is extraordinary; this feels like more of a collection of very slightly intertwined short stories than a novel, but the connecting thread to all of it is Lagos itself, and particularly queer experiences of Lagos. It was a little bit inconsistent, but Osunde's writing held my attention throughout and some sections I found very emotionally impactful.
I found Osunde’s descriptions – particularly of queer pain and joy, of exclusion, of internalized queerphobia – deeply impactful and deeply true, and found myself highlighting frequently. I will absolutely pick up Osunde’s next book.

<i>Content warnings:</i> violence, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, domestic abuse, forcible confinement, sexual assault, suicide, murder, death, grief

Content Warnings

miainthemargins's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

“And now, what else were they to do as rain beat against the window? What else but place a palm on a lover's chest, saying thank you to her maker as she says thank you to your country, both thanking both for making them into these people with a bold faith in the unseen, for teaching them—by necessity, by difficulty—how to rebel with both faith and sight, how exactly to use their hearts and hands if one day they grew up to be women who risk their lives to stand on the horizon. Women mad enough to see and hold another woman; to love and touch another ghost.”

TITLE—Vagabonds!

AUTHOR—Eloghosa Osunde

PUBLISHED—2022

PUBLISHER—Riverhead books

GENRE—literary fiction with some short story energy

SETTING—Lagos

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Nigerian society & culture, Naijá language, gods & devils, faith-based versus fear-based lifeways & belief systems and the sometimes insidious sometimes subversive places where they intersect, queerness & divergency, the real & the “unreal”, mythology & mythical realities, stories & storytelling, classism & classist corruption, the subliminal legacies of colonialism, imperialism, & mission christianity in Nigeria, city spirits, fairygodgirls, the lifesaving powers of books & stories, Death & grief, systemic misogyny & toxic masculinity and the toll that takes on all of society, chosen family, truth & seeing

“I heard one crying woman ask: ‘Why won't they live and let live?’ The answer is simple: Because freedom means open air, and open air is a threat because it means that that there's no need for secrets or lies or deceit. It means love who you love and leave the rest be. But do you think those in power know what they love, outside of power? Look, they will run mad in a world that calls for that, because you can't see some things about others without seeing yourself.”

My thoughts:

This was an epic literary masterpiece—a tender, compassionate, and hopeful portrait of a city on the brink, leaning simultaneously into and out of the fire—touched by flames of fear fueled by erratic sometimes cruel gods, and the flames of passion and deepest love fueled by the embodied souls that call the city their home. This is going to be a book that I will need at least one other reading of in order to truly appreciate and be able to speak to everything Osunde was doing with how gods are connected to culture are connected to ensouled identity are connected to love are connected to the choices people make and the belief systems they use to guide and justify those choices.

There were so many interesting and complex characters, equally tragic and inspiring, with moments as utterly wholesome as there are moments that are utterly horrifying. A book that encapsulates what it means to be an individual that is inextricably part of a larger and often limiting context from family to neighborhood to city to culture to all the worlds through which the soul and spirit move and yet how finding the joy in the truth of yourself and nurturing a community around you that supports and empowers your truth is the purest kind of salvation.

My favorite chapters/stories were: “THOMAS”, “OVERHEARD: FAIRYGODGIRLS”, “TATAFO (HALF THE SKY)”, “AFTER GOD, FEAR WOMEN”, and “OVERHEARD: HIDE US IN GOD”.

I would recommend this book to readers who love epic and beautifully written literary fiction with empowering queer themes. This book is best read along to an Alice Smith playlist.

Final note: And whew. I was not expecting that ending. 🥹🤧☺️

“Take it from me: hard-walled as it is, there are cracks in power that can be crawled through. And if there's anything vagabonds know how to do, it's to live in the cracks; to grow tall and thick as unfellable trees.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Season: dark moons, solstices & other sacred times

CW // homophobia, transphobia, suicide, child abuse & assault, cancer, domestic & misogynistic violence (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI by Akwaeke Emezi
FRESHWATER by Akwaeke Emezi
Amos Tutuola
Cadwell Turnbull
THE CHARM BUYERS by Lillian Howan
KRIK? KRAK! by Edwidge Danticat
THE TRUTH ABOUT STORIES by Thomas King
THE CITY WE BECAME by NK Jemisin—TBR
ANNIE JOHN by Jamaica Kincaid
PET by Akwaeke Emezi
THE ICARUS GIRL by Helen Oyeyemi

Favorite Quotes—

“Have mercy on yourself, straighten your steps. Turn your back. Because if you dey wait for us to turn our own back and start to go, then my dear, na the weight of our eye go surely kill you.”

“As with Thomas now, the rumor back then was that Anjos had turned out this way because he took books too seriously, too literally. They weren't even saying this to be cruel o. They were only worried for him, because the family tree seemed to grow toward a warning: madness was wet soil and many people, once they'd stumbled on it, couldn't help hurtling to the end of a too-dark valley.”

“He knew exactly what they were talking around, but still he loved Uncle Anjos thickly, specifically because he'd managed to protect his childlikeness in a way most adults could not, and he wasn't afraid to show how brightly his eyes could shine with belief, new faiths brewing behind them. Listening to him, Thomas could feel both the danger and the promise of the world in full, and it thrilled him to the bone.”

"I don't abuse my power," the man had said in a coiled voice. "I did it for you, because with the life you have ahead, you're going to need faith. You're going to need to root your eyes in places other people can't see."

“So, what is the difference between truth and myth? Who gets to determine it? Does a lack of faith in something make it unreal? How do unreal things happen? Why do they have witnesses? Is it a parallel world that leaks into ours from time to time, or does one real overlap with others?”

“The story turned Thomas's stomach into sky, twisted feardelightsad prickling and darting around like shooting stars. What world was this?”

“The eyes at your back of your head, eh, keep them open."

“Because of this, Thomas was careful not to be in a rush to make friends. He walked with a certain caution, like he understood that he was sharing this world, and that, at any given time, another reality could override his own. It wasn’t a matter of whether it was happening or not; it was more about whether you were willing to see it. And, he was still the boy his uncle raised—ever curious, ever believing—so no bad thing had seen him.”

“We knew that even if they were to try to find justice, they'd be discouraged by their position in the queue, so far back that it'd take them years to touch the hem of the law's garment.”

“We'd say: This is him, the scapegoat we caught, look at the wounds on his body, look at him quarter-to-dying, yes, he is suffering well—and we'd go back to our days and they'd go back with their news, because you can trust people not to look past faces.”

“…silence is a dangerous thing to give yourself to, especially if you were born to speak.”

“”No,” the man said, shaking his head, “it loots you from you. It rockbottoms you. At least you can stand up from humility. But there are lower points than that.””

“That it's the only way you know does not mean it's the only way there is.”

"Yeah, but how many of us understood that at her age? Isn't ther why we send them help? Because we wished someone had told us, or had seen our worry and offered a solution? Like a book, a dream, a look, some advice. Look, the alarm wouldn't be going off on her if she didn't need our help, would it? She needs us."

"Well," she explained, "I picked this one because Annie John understands freedom, and not only does she understand it, she fights for it. She loves untidily, not just with her heart but with her head, her mouth, her feet, her teeth. She allows herself to hate and resent things without requiring too much justification from herself. She understands, she really understands, that it's okay to choose yourself. And that you can—and maybe should—leave home, if all home knows how to do is kill you."

“The oldest and tallest of them said, "Remember. Our job is one thing and one thing alone. Put the book, or the door or the road or the manual, in their hands and step away. What they do with it is not our business. All you need to do is get the book to them. Haven't we seen this before?"”

“Have you ever seen furious girls gather and become unstoppable? Together, they make the holiest God you've seen—the kind young girls have deserved all along. They offer the kind of friendship cynics call madness, that adults call imaginary. They make friendly planets of your mind, touch your afternoons with goodness, slide a chuckle into your belly, plant a kiss behind your ear. They tell you: look, in front of you, that’s what it looks like to be free. They are the lifesavers. Fairygodgirls with the most magical hue of skin.”

“Books mattered, because girls who are at their most real in book pages are sometimes the only reason alive girls get through their years at all. Gone girls shifting the world to help keep here girls alive; gone girls there to say: ‘I'm seeing you, you're not the one who needs a new mind, it's them.’ "You will be strange,” they were saying, "but you won't be strange alone."”

“As clearly as some people remembered the day they gave their lives to Christ, she remembered the day she took hers back…”

“Wura said. “You're the one who’s afraid, not me.” “Can I leave this with you?” Ms. Kolawole said, holding out her Bible.

“No,” Wura said. “You need it more than I do.””

“Shame works, because there are those who we name when we talk power, but not when we talk harm.”

“You're powerful, unstoppable, untouchable; there are no consequences for you. Because what incentive is there to change if that's the story you inherited—a story of deep power, of inherent godlikeness? It's part of the design. You sef no go accept? It's the way of the road. Because I can tell you that without fear, na me go still tell you this one: they can choose to lose the chip the moment they start knowing themselves.”

“What I will also say is that women are magicians. I don't mean magic like the kind you were warned to avoid. I mean magic as in spinning story as lifeline, as in turning a wound into a star, as in holding an apocalypse in your core and smiling believably.”

“I paid for the way my mouth ran then, so I don't need to talk more than this on the issue, or even start to tell you any of the million stories I know, because everywhere you look there are stories telling themselves.”

“Try as she might to upset him enough for him to Do Something that would make everything else believable, he wouldn't hit her, though she wished he would for fucking once. She needed marks. For this kind of thing, most people worked by sight, not by faith, because the world was twisted that way.”

“If I had known then what I now know, I'd have done things differently, that's for sure. But back then, it took me a long time to ask why.”

“What I struggled with then was how long it took me to see that people punish in others what they hate in themselves. It's the part I'm still forgiving myself for.”

“Whoever thinks women are easier lovers than men has never met a cruel woman, a terrified terror—a woman desperate to save her neck, one who could burn your world on purpose just so she wouldn't have to go down. Women can flay you, fray you to unrecognition, turn you outside-in so quickly you'll forget to remember why you exist. Women will hand you a bottomless well of pain with tears in their eyes. We can do anything; we can make mistakes; we are not immaculate just because we've been taught to be docile.”

“You and I are both mad and we match each other. Sane or insane, you cannot scare me.”

“I'll be clear: I'm trying to hallucinate you. I feel my sane sliding sideways. But that's okay, because what is reality any way if not a thing to be played with, stretched and tested—something that echoes out, multiplying in a sideways stream? Besides, anything is worth bending—even the facts of my vision, even the truth of my eyes, if it means getting closer to you. What is a little madness? No be only crase? People go mad all the time. We've both gone there and back for lesser people.”

“She talked and laughed and joked like a person with a child-self paused on purpose until she could find a home safe enough to rest in.”

“People didn't grow that much compassion without first suffering tremendously. They got along from inside that void: Nkem needed the big sister, Adura needed the younger one.”

“…where love and acceptance were contingent on how good a masquerade you were.”

“They saw each other so far past the pain that, no matter how hard their families tried to unsee them, they could never be invisible again.”

“A good percentage of them were havoc-wreakers during the day, who did and unlooked terrible things in high places. Some of the clients were even hellbent on making freedom like this impossible outside. They wanted it for themselves, in the dark, underground. And why not? Where's the thrill in something that everybody gets to have? Being that untouchable can make you forget your humanity, can monster you out of you.”

“Being in a country where dykes were ghosts and shapeshifters for a living, for a life, meant that shit here didn't work like it did abroad. But that didn't mean it didn't work at all, because people still found ways to love each other, even in nervous conditions. We're ghosts because we have to be, because our lives depend on passing and being passed by.”

“But we're ghosts who see other ghosts often, who hold them and hug them and fuck them, too, in our bedrooms, doors closed. We love them too. Like you. Here, they call us mad. We go again. They strike us down. We choose again. They black off our lights. We learn the dark. We don't die. We never die. We only love harder. We only see sharper. I can appear and disappear in seconds, at will. I can look like a not-sin, a non-outcast. People like us don't need a club full of women to find one who'll go down if we look right. We know our signals, our codes. You're not only real when everybody can see you.”

“‘…Breathe and I'll choose you again. There, see, I choose you again.’ In her anniversary card, Daisy wrote: ‘If they say we don't exist, that they can't see us anywhere except in rotten corners, in perverse bodies, how come I can see you and hold you and you're holy; how come I can love you and home you and you're there, in flesh, in my mind, in my blood; how come I keep waking up in this love and feel rested? What else to do now then, when a love like this finds you? What else but praise? What else but dance?’”

“Ask yourself: if you hated something in yourself and it was up to you to choose between seeing it smiling everywhere you go (a taunting nightmare) and keeping it behind closed doors (a bearable dream), what would you pick?”

“Why be happy when you could be normal?: That might be our national question, you know?”

“Yes. ‘*This* is my life. This *is* my life. This is *my* life.’”

“People who know loss know this: there's nothing harder to let go of than an already-gone thing.”

“B. felt shame swirl around her torso. This was one of her flaws—this inability to receive love without feeling indebted. She couldn't see herself having the required energy to pay this kind of thing back.”

“…it's the violence (regular as it is in the world) not the love that should be strange…”

“People will survive every time you try to kill them. But they will also get more beastly.”

“‘…What will people become if they have to mind their own business instead of other people's business? If they can't find others to hate, to kill, to target? What happens if light, music, drugs, sex, everything all disappears and all you have is you? Do you like you? Can you survive you?’

‘So they have to think of what they've done. They have to hear their heads.’

‘Exactly. They also have to look at who they are.’

‘And how long will it last?’

‘Just until the sun comes up. But once you see yourself, you can't unsee yourself. So that's more than enough time.’”

“‘Who looks harder at themselves than people who the world is always hunting?’ he asked. ‘Nobody. We're always watching ourselves because we have to. Tonight, we get a break and they get a few hours in our shoes. They get to feel how painful it is to be a person who can’t escape the fact that they're alone or hated or hunted, while we get to have what they have every other day: no fear. Whether this is a dream of nightmare depends on who the person is and what they have to hide, do you get? At the end of the day, people are their own punishment. What is unfair about that?’”

“There's nothing more righteous than a story that insists people look the truth in the eye…”

“We now know we have nothing to be ashamed of. And they know that we know that now. They cannot make us unknow it.”

“If anybody deserves to live… it is us. It is as, after all this dying we have done.”

Content Warnings