Thandi recalls how terrified she was of visiting her relatives in South Africa, fearing the violence there.Īs a light-skinned black woman in Pennsylvania, Thandi struggles, caught between two worlds. They returned to America together he became a professor, she a nurse. Thandi’s mother met her father when he volunteered to work in Botswana. Her mother’s family was very wealthy, and South Africa was a pleasant place for them the violence of Apartheid did not affect them. Thandi is American, the daughter of a dark-skinned African-American man and a light-skinned South African woman. Thandi then recounts how her parents met. She has a dinner of Chinese takeout with her father, but when she thinks about her mother (the food reminds her of the meals her mother will no longer make her) and the possibility of losing her father as well, she becomes sick. The novel begins with a brief prologue set after Thandi’s mother has passed. Clemmons employs a variety of experimental techniques, telling the story without a traditional narrative and instead conveying events and emotions through short vignettes, snatches of dialog, and song lyrics. Based on Clemmons’s own experiences, the novel tells the story of a young woman whose mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, which changes her life in a variety of negative ways. What We Lose is a novel by Zinzi Clemmons, published in 2017.
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