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A review by sarah_thebooknerd
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It will be a top read of 2024 for me. It's a memoir written in verse and if you are a fan of Elizabeth Acevedo, I think you would love Walela Nehanda.
Walela is a fat Black queer non-binary person and they have dealt with family trauma, racism, distorted eating, navigating gender, queerness, fatphobia, mental health, and medical trauma. Walela is raw and takes the readers with them as they navigated various points in their life that culminated in a diagnosis of leukemia at 23. We learn about how each part of Walela's identities intersected with the diagnosis and how it impacted them as they had to learn to navigate a medical system that is not build for fat Black queer non-binary people.
Walela also discusses how isolating it can be to deal with a chronic illness and be disabled in society.
I had to just sit at times with the way that this book moved me. I will leave you with this quote from the book:
"my cancer saved me, because did you know it is actually really so fucking terrifying being invested in living?"
Walela is a fat Black queer non-binary person and they have dealt with family trauma, racism, distorted eating, navigating gender, queerness, fatphobia, mental health, and medical trauma. Walela is raw and takes the readers with them as they navigated various points in their life that culminated in a diagnosis of leukemia at 23. We learn about how each part of Walela's identities intersected with the diagnosis and how it impacted them as they had to learn to navigate a medical system that is not build for fat Black queer non-binary people.
Walela also discusses how isolating it can be to deal with a chronic illness and be disabled in society.
I had to just sit at times with the way that this book moved me. I will leave you with this quote from the book:
"my cancer saved me, because did you know it is actually really so fucking terrifying being invested in living?"