A review by nenaveenstra
Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Rape, Child abuse, Violence, Suicide attempt, Domestic abuse, and Sexual violence

Religious trauma