Every once in a while I look back at my reviews from back when I was just starting to review books, and I sometimes think, “I wouldn’t have rated that book that way now.”

For instance, I recently scrolled past my review of a book I had rated 4 stars a year ago, but thinking back on my remembered experience reading that book, I would probably have rated it 3 stars if I’d reviewed it today. Does anyone else ever feel that way about your old reviews? Have you noticed your review style changing over time, or are you fairly consistent? Do you ever go back and adjust your old reviews, or do you leave them how they are? Just curious!

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.”