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- Notes on Grief
Notes on Grief
An affecting paean to the author’s father, James Nwoye Adichie (1932-2020). An elegant, moving contribution to the literature of death and dying.
The author moves through some of the classic stages of grief, including no small amount of anger—at the well-meaning but empty word demise as well as the ineffectual condolences of well-meaning people. Eventually, the author reflects on a newfound awareness of mortality and finds a ‘new urgency’ to live her life and do her work in the ever present shadow of death.
Near the end of the book, Adichie addresses the capacity of grief to warp chronology, drown the mind in “roiling thoughts,” and force us to face head-on the reality of death:
“I finally understand why people get tattoos of those they have lost. The need to proclaim not merely the loss but the love, the continuity….It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not; grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present. It doesn’t matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed. A new voice is pushing itself out of my writing, full of the closeness I feel to death, the awareness of my own mortality, so finely threaded, so acute. A new urgency. An impermanence in the air. I must write everything now, because who knows how long I have?”
Hardcover w/ Dust Jacket
67 pages.
Dimensions: 7.25" x 5.2" x .5"