This is another novel I picked up thanks to an Audie Cornish interview with Michael Donkor that I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered while driving home earlier this fall. I came in right as they were talking about Donkor’s ear for language, and the rhythms of different accents are one of the many things that stood out to me in the novel as well as the interweaving of expressions in Twi, a Ghanaian dialect. It’s a story about relationships—one is between Belinda, a 17-year-old […]
Well, Go On Now, Speak
This morning on CBS Sunday Morning, the cover story was a piece about gay conversion therapy. Though the introduction by Jane Pauley made it sound like this issue was something with two clear sides, the story mainly focused on the pain this practice has caused. The pain felt by those forced to undergo it, the pain felt by parents who thought they were saving their children’s souls by sending their sons and daughters to these programs, and the pain felt by certain religious figures who […]
I was in love with the night even before I was in love with the girl
It starts in a bar. One of ours, in the heart of Khayelitsha. Nothing special on the outside but inside, tonight, two hundred people cram together beneath the corrugated roof and wait, turned out in their Friday Bests, because everyone knows you have to look good for the radio (1). Thanks to the great curating at my local public library, I stumbled onto this book totally by accident—intrigued by its cover and by the description on the inside flap. I had just seen the […]
Damm, now I’m caught up!
There’s something wonderful about discovering a new series and having the books you haven’t read yet beckoning to you from a future snow day or vacation, creating a nice bit of anticipation that you’re hesitant to lose. You may have finished with the first adventure but the story goes on. Much like binge watching a good TV show on Netflix or Amazon (Travelers and Jack Ryan, I’m talking about you!), you both want to consume faster and slow down. This is how I felt as […]