{"id":55279,"date":"2017-11-27T02:58:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T02:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55279"},"modified":"2017-11-27T02:58:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T02:58:53","slug":"what-we-lose-a-striking-novel-about-filial-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55279","title":{"rendered":"What We Lose: A Striking Novel About Filial Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

What We Lose<\/strong>: A Striking Novel About Filial Grief<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/a>
\n2017-08-01<\/p>\n

Amy Weiss-Meyer<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Editor<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nZinzi Clemmons<\/a> (Nina Subin)<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Zinzi Clemmons\u2019s<\/a> debut tangles with familiar questions, using a propulsive experimentalism in lieu of linear narrative.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Zinzi Clemmons<\/a> was a graduate student at Columbia, at work on her MFA, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Clemmons had been writing a novel with a more or less linear narrative structure. She moved back home to Philadelphia<\/a> and kept writing, but differently now, taking notes and collecting fragments of text as she cared for her mother. \u201cThe only time and energy I could muster resulted in that very short form,\u201d she said<\/a> recently. \u201cI just ended up keeping those pieces and stitching them together, and a fictional narrative arose.\u201d The novel she had been working on no longer felt worth her while; she\u2019d been trying to use it, she said, to \u201cavoid what was going on with my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new novel that emerged, What We Lose<\/a>,<\/em> is a startling, poignant debut, released to no shortage of fanfare (Vogue<\/em> called<\/a> it \u201cthe debut novel of the year\u201d). It tells a story based loosely on the author\u2019s own. The protagonist is Thandi, who, like Clemmons herself, is the daughter of a \u201ccoloured<\/a>\u201d South African mother and an African American father. Thandi, like Clemmons, was raised in a wealthy, mostly white suburb of Philadelphia. Thandi\u2019s self-proclaimed status as a \u201cstrange in-betweener\u201d\u2014she has \u201clight skin and foreign roots,\u201d and feels neither fully black American nor fully African\u2014is a defining preoccupation of her young adulthood. Her relationship with her mother is loving but difficult. And in the wake of her death, as Thandi unexpectedly confronts the possibility of becoming a parent herself, she struggles to come to terms with what her mother\u2019s life was, and what hers should be…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zinzi Clemmons\u2019s debut tangles with familiar questions, using a propulsive experimentalism in lieu of linear narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,5,8,520,20],"tags":[27708,6001,27700],"class_list":["post-55279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-south-africa","category-usa","tag-amy-weiss-meyer","tag-the-atlantic","tag-zinzi-clemmons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55280,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55279\/revisions\/55280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}