Mind you I finished this book a while ago but I got the sudden ping! that Richard's life reads exactly like that TikTok sound that goes ~ "Monday? Humiliation. Tuesday, suffocation. Wednesday - condescension. Thursday...is pathetic. By Friday...life has killed me🎵" 🤣😭

That was his soundtrack😭 Poor lad was going through something everyday, wasn't even a main OR side character in his own story, just a spectator with no roots dear Richie.

“I think I’d rather enjoy this ‘world run by men’ you’ve been talking about. Surely a kinder, more caring and – dare I say it? – more sexy world than the one we live in. More soon, my dear!

Oh I'm loving this already

Saw that plot twist coming ten thousand miles away. Cute read though

This scene made me think, especially as an African. I know where my roots are I know where I come from. I cannot relate to the feelings of diaspora Africans. Is your ancestry really who you are? If you do not know where you came from, if you do not know if there are others like you, do you have an identity? Or is your identity what you make it? Is denying your roots a betrayal of the self or a choice that should be respected? Are your roots YOU? Is it such an unforgivable choice? Was Yetu wrong for wanting to forget the pain and suffering of remembering the horrors of what her ancestors faced? Granted of course she remembered hundreds of years of suffering, her memories were not ordinary, her circumstances were not normal. But I understand both their perspectives, the reasons for their anger are justified. If you were given a choice to know or not to know, why would you want to know? Why is ancestry important?

“And it hurts. I gave up the memories so I could be free.” So she could live. Oori looked out at the sea, unblinking. “I would take any amount of pain in the world if it meant I could know all the memories of the Oshuben. I barely know any stories from my parents’ generation. I can’t remember our language. How could you leave behind something like that? Doesn’t it hurt not to know who you are?” “I know who I am now. All I knew before was who they were, who they wanted me to be,” said Yetu. “And it was killing me. It did kill me.” ... “Oori shook her head and stood up from the water. “But your whole history. Your ancestry. That’s who you are.” “No. I am who I am now. Before, I was no one. When you’re everyone in the past, and when you’re for everyone in the present, you’re no one. Nobody. You don’t exist. I didn’t exist.”

I thought about the ending for a very long time after reading it. A very long time