Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi

38 reviews

thatenbyisisreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This book, especially the poem, "I was born in a great length of river", helped remind me that despite all of my trauma, I will never know what it's like to drown. Akwaeke Emezi is truly such an inspiring and powerful author, I highly recommend everyone to read their work! 
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tinytrashqueen's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
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graceburke's review against another edition

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emotional fast-paced

4.0

I'm definitely not a poetry person, but I love Emezi, so thought I'd give this a try. Incredibly vulnerable and emotional. My love for Emezi remains strong after this beautiful, concise book of poetry.
My favorites: Disclosure, Sanctuary, I was Born in a Great Length of River, Mourning, and Self-Portrait as an Abuser
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starrysteph's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.25

beautiful. chilling.

CW: rape, self harm, suicide, child abuse, emotional & physical abuse, homophobia, transphobia, death, blood, violence, cannibalism, medical trauma
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jouljet's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced

4.0

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honeyvoiced's review against another edition

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fast-paced

3.5

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clara_mai's review against another edition

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3.0

 I love Akwaeke Emezi's novels Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji and their memoir Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, not least due to their stunning writing and vivid imagery, so my expectations for their poetry collection were quite high. After reading all the poems in this book I can say that generally, I enjoy the concept of the collection, particularly the series of poems in which the lyrical self is related to the holy family (mary, jesus, joseph, magdalene all appear), more than the actual pieces. Having read their memoir, most of the content of this collection, which is as far as I understand mostly autobiographical, is familiar. I once again felt a deep admiration for Emezi while reading, because they express their identity as well as their traumatic experiences so boldly through art. At the same time, while I found individual lines and images to be striking, many of the poems left me without any particular feeling or a lasting impression. Others that dealt very explicitly with heavy content did certainly leave an impression because of said content but the writing, the poetic technique didn't really. Exceptions for me are self-portrait as an abuser, which is masterfully crafted and extremely effective and the first and last poem of the collection (both part of the "holy family cycle"). All in all this is good, but I would rather recommend Emezi's prose if you've never read anything by them. Lastly, I want to add that I'm really no expert when it comes to poetry, as I don't really write it myself and haven't thoroughly studied it (especially not in English) or even read much of it. This is all just a very subjective take of my experience reading this collection. 
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softanimal's review against another edition

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4.5

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atla98's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective

5.0

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emabelle's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

1.0

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