What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

Have you ever read a book and had to repeatedly remind yourself it wasn't a true story? That you weren't reading a memoir? That the beautifully written passages were works of fiction and not someone's own struggle? This is how I felt while reading What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. I'm not sure if it is because I've been reading more memoirs than usual lately or if the writing is just so honest that it was hard to differentiate real from not but I constantly had to remind myself that this was fiction. It was that good.

Told in short vignettes, chapters that sometimes were no longer than a sentence, Clemmons created a sense of reading something incredibly personal. Almost as if I had stumbled upon the diary of Thandie, the main character. Her story of loss (her mother) as well as the pull between two cultures, her own skin color (not black, not white), her place in life and in love, as a mother and a wife and then not. Oh gosh. There was so much happening here, in this short book. The glimpse into Thandie's world, her struggles and the loss of her mother (I can't even imagine) gave me pause time and again to think. It brought to mind the quote from To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

Zinzi Clemmons did an excellent job making me feel like I was reading a true story, she made me question what I would do in similar circumstances and left me considering life from a different perspective. I have nothing in common with the main character in this book, with her struggles or her setbacks, her losses or achievements but actively putting myself in her shoes while I read through this short work of fiction made me appreciate Clemmon's writing all the more!

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in reading something a bit different, looking for a different perspective on loss and finding yourself in a world where there isn't a box for you to fit in. The vignettes of Thandie's life created all the more a sense of peeking into someone's personal diary. I rated this 4 stars on Goodreads and am excited to pass it along to other reader friends! Look for it's release on July 11th of this year!

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons 
207 pages
Published by Viking Books