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A review by theabundantword
Manorism by Yomi Sode
emotional
medium-paced
5.0
I often see a lot of reviewers use the word visceral when reviewing books and I feel like it’s such a big, beautiful, deep word that it makes me long to feel something this deeply as well.
Then here comes this book.
Typically, I read books that offer me distance from my daily life. Not necessarily escapism but maybe some new angle that allows me to reflect on society or scenarios that happen in life with a certain detachment that ensures I won’t have to feel any daily pain twice.
This book was different. It provoked a visceral reaction that shattered me. It spoke to my pain. My particular pain. As a Black British woman from London. As a mother to a Black son, who is almost a man and who I can’t protect from all that a young Black man has to deal with. As a person who, at 39, really only recently understood the uncertainty and inevitably of death and finds it upsetting. Terrifying.
It spoke of the frustrations most of us will understand in the Black community, the issues in families, the modern culture and events that make Black masculinity be seen as both blessing and curse, the daily and generational pain we carry in a landscape that is so often hostile to us.
Most importantly, I think, is that it gives Black men a voice. In a place, in a manner that isn’t really heard enough. Through poetry. Art. Through a testimony so tender, personal and vulnerable that I wanted to reach through the page and hug the writer and try to absorb some of that pain and grief.
And I cried. I cried for my son. I cried for my brother. I cried for my uncles, and for this writer and Londoners and for our many Black communities. I cried because it was so raw, so beautiful, so deep… A safe space to feel anger and grief and love in a voice that I recognised spiritually.
For me this is a modern classic.
Then here comes this book.
Typically, I read books that offer me distance from my daily life. Not necessarily escapism but maybe some new angle that allows me to reflect on society or scenarios that happen in life with a certain detachment that ensures I won’t have to feel any daily pain twice.
This book was different. It provoked a visceral reaction that shattered me. It spoke to my pain. My particular pain. As a Black British woman from London. As a mother to a Black son, who is almost a man and who I can’t protect from all that a young Black man has to deal with. As a person who, at 39, really only recently understood the uncertainty and inevitably of death and finds it upsetting. Terrifying.
It spoke of the frustrations most of us will understand in the Black community, the issues in families, the modern culture and events that make Black masculinity be seen as both blessing and curse, the daily and generational pain we carry in a landscape that is so often hostile to us.
Most importantly, I think, is that it gives Black men a voice. In a place, in a manner that isn’t really heard enough. Through poetry. Art. Through a testimony so tender, personal and vulnerable that I wanted to reach through the page and hug the writer and try to absorb some of that pain and grief.
And I cried. I cried for my son. I cried for my brother. I cried for my uncles, and for this writer and Londoners and for our many Black communities. I cried because it was so raw, so beautiful, so deep… A safe space to feel anger and grief and love in a voice that I recognised spiritually.
For me this is a modern classic.