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hilaryreadsbooks's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
"Certain that you are not alone, even if you are lonely. As long as my words have the power to touch you, I love you and I'm not dead."
These dynamic words begin Sade LaNay's collection I love you and I'm not dead. Prose-like / poem-like stream of consciousness is sometimes untitled, sometimes titled with timestamps, sometimes with descriptions of LaNay's Black ancestors performing ritual. Phillis Wheatley casts a circle with sodalite. Octavia Estelle Butler and Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert drag the Devil out from under the bed. Toni Morrison closes the circle with aragonite. And throughout is an outpouring of trauma. These words read like an open wound, a deeply vulnerable brokenheartedness. LaNay mourns past and present pain, forced and coerced upon them until it is internalized: "I am small morbidness. I don't know things. I I I I don't know who I am I need so much more than loathing myself."
Yet among the pain is healing as LaNay's words reach through space and time to touch souls with their ancestors. As each ancestor performs ritual, LaNay honors their memory by documenting their astrological sign and the details of their archival papers. This is how they begin to heal, through shared memory, history, and the realization that—
"I want to be in those archives."
LaNay remembers that their journals were burnt many years ago when they were thirteen. The fact that this book exists is an act of radical resistance, of survival, because this is an insistence that yes, they exist in this world and here is proof. Here is proof that the Sade LaNay in these archives existed and hurt and healed and survived. Here are words that will join the long legacy of words written and spoken by all those before them.
Perhaps one day a descendent will reach through time after reading these words and ask to be held, for a circle to be cast.
Full review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVDeaANAyJE/
These dynamic words begin Sade LaNay's collection I love you and I'm not dead. Prose-like / poem-like stream of consciousness is sometimes untitled, sometimes titled with timestamps, sometimes with descriptions of LaNay's Black ancestors performing ritual. Phillis Wheatley casts a circle with sodalite. Octavia Estelle Butler and Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert drag the Devil out from under the bed. Toni Morrison closes the circle with aragonite. And throughout is an outpouring of trauma. These words read like an open wound, a deeply vulnerable brokenheartedness. LaNay mourns past and present pain, forced and coerced upon them until it is internalized: "I am small morbidness. I don't know things. I I I I don't know who I am I need so much more than loathing myself."
Yet among the pain is healing as LaNay's words reach through space and time to touch souls with their ancestors. As each ancestor performs ritual, LaNay honors their memory by documenting their astrological sign and the details of their archival papers. This is how they begin to heal, through shared memory, history, and the realization that—
"I want to be in those archives."
LaNay remembers that their journals were burnt many years ago when they were thirteen. The fact that this book exists is an act of radical resistance, of survival, because this is an insistence that yes, they exist in this world and here is proof. Here is proof that the Sade LaNay in these archives existed and hurt and healed and survived. Here are words that will join the long legacy of words written and spoken by all those before them.
Perhaps one day a descendent will reach through time after reading these words and ask to be held, for a circle to be cast.
Full review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVDeaANAyJE/
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, and Sexual content
Moderate: Homophobia
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