Like nothing I'd read before

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ansia.georgaki Avatar

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Yetu is the historian - she holds the memories of her people and only shares them with them during the Remembrance. Her people live happy, yet ignorant, while she struggles with the memories of how her people came to be: the Wajinru are the water-dwelling descendants of the African pregnant women thrown overboard the slave ships.
The writing is outstanding, dreamy, lyrical, written to be read aloud, and enhances the dreamy state of slipping in and out of memories. We see how the first of Yetu's people came to be, how they evolved, and how they decided to store all their history in the mind of 1 person, because the memories are too hurtful. We see the weight of this burden and we see how ignoring the past is not always healing.
I heard and read ownvoices reviews before picking up this book, and I would highly recommend for everyone to seek out such reviews to maximize their understanding of this short, but compact book.