This one cracked me right open and broke me in the best possible way one could be broken–which is to say–by art.

There are some authors who write in a way that is effortlessly beautiful. Safiya Sinclair has some of the most effortfully beautiful writing I've ever read. Every word is a perfectly and precisely chosen jewel, spun up into these iridescent strands that you cannot help but marvel at. Listening to the way that Sinclair describes even the most mundane things is enchanting and almost transcendental, like seeing a brand new color for the very first time.

This book is comped to Educated by Tara Westover (arguably my favorite memoir) and although this is a very different story, I agree that it hits a lot of overlapping themes. Most particularly, both books show the power of education as a means of breaking free from oppression. At one point, Safiya phrases this as her and her siblings "outdreaming the confines of [their] small world" and that is such an apt description. So many moments brought tears to my eyes, just thinking about the unwavering strength of women, forgiveness in the face of what seems unforgivable, and perhaps most of all: escaping from patriarchy and generational trauma.

Audiobook allll the way - this is the kind of writing that is meant to be read out loud and it hit extra hard to hear Sinclair's story through her own voice.

Overall thoughts: I think this book will be too meandering or too flowery for many people. I would definitely check the trigger warnings on this one. But if you like writing that is gorgeous for its own sake and have the energy to pick up something that is likely to emotionally shatter you, this book is an absolute triumph.

Select quotes:
“‘I was a dead-left child, abandoned.’ Her voice was thin and faraway. I gazed into the unspoken distance of where she was now gazing. ‘My world was small and bleak. But poetry made it seem wide and wild and warmer.’

Her face lit up as she laughed and told me that that was alliteration. I asked her what alliteration was and she explained it to me. I crowded in greedy. Each word she tossed I caught, and watched it come alive in my hands.

‘Poetry is the best of what I have come to love about this world,’ my mother said.”

“I screamed until I was hoarse, for her. The young girl who had stepped onto that rusty nail. The one who charmed a room of white men to get a scholarship to private school. The girl who read the dictionary and encyclopedia night after night. The girl who walked away from that glass shard to conjure her silver poem. The one who birthed herself from the veiled world into possibility. The first girl in a line of girls who looked into the frayed face of her bleak future and said 'no'. I rejoiced now, for her, and for her, and for her.”

“Day after day, I swung over those words, and saw ahead of me a life withering slowly under all his multiplying decrees. Day after day my heart bucked up against it. I was never going to be the perfect daughter. A grin of mischief opened ever so slyly inside me, a seedling of a voice that said no.”