Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Content Warning: Everything

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi

11 reviews

nenaveenstra's review against another edition

3.0

I love Akwaeke Emezi's novel writing but this poetry collection wasn't exactly my thing. The poems heavily lean on Christian imagery and violence, and the content kind of overpowered the craft. That made these poems get repetitive, too, and it got hard to stay focused. Also, I did not love the long strings of text without punctuation.

But there were some poems I really liked, especially in the beginning of this collection, like "Folding for a cruel man", "Excommunication", and "Self-portrait as a cannibal".

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levisainz's review against another edition

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

4.0

heartbreaking and beautiful. the poem “self portrait of an abuser” is a masterclass in poetry. two towers of text that mean so much alone, and then when read together create a whole new, even more powerful poem. amazing

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mxpringle's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.25

Content Warning:Everything is a collection of poetry, much of which explores details of their life covered in their memoir and also their first novel. Seeing similar events and themes explored in different genres is intriguing. Emezi is an author whose books seem to always be in conversation with each other - each work part of a greater whole. Some poems impacted me more than others but the ones that hit, hit hard. One of the things that struck me about this collection was speculative type poems involving Biblical figures poems like What if Jesus was my Big Brother and What if Magdalene Seduced Me. While I won’t pretend I understood every poem I was captured by their raw power and emotion. Trauma and violence are definitely present - the title does not lie - but so too is resilience. I know many of us on Bookstagram gravitate to fiction far more than poetry. If you want to give contemporary poetry a try and have read some of Emezi’s previous work, particularly Freshwater and/or Dear Senthuran then I recommend giving this a go. Familiarity with those works will really help ease your way with a less familiar genre.

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aglclark's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced

4.75

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hngisreading's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

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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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