What We Lose: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust
“The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue
“Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker
“Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine
“Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home.” —Buzzfeed
“Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey.” —Essence
From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country
Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love.
In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.
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Zinzi Clemmons. (2017). What We Lose: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Zinzi Clemmons. 2017. What We Lose: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Zinzi Clemmons. What We Lose: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 3 | 3 |
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- A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust
“The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue
“Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker
“Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine
“Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home.” —Buzzfeed
“Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey.” —Essence
From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country
Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love.
In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction. - reviews
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May 15, 2017
Exacting reflections on race, mourning, and family are at the center of this novel about a college student whose mother dies of cancer. Born to an American father and a South African mother, Thandi is a character defined by conflicting conceptions of identity, belonging, and class, divisions that only deepen in the wake of her mother’s death. Early chapters establish these dichotomies in content and form, contrasting Thandi’s charged visits to Johannesburg with her Philadelphia coming of age by way of photographs, articles, graphs, and song lyrics. The first third of the novel culminates with Thandi discovering that she is pregnant, before then detailing her mother’s illness and how the resulting heartbreak ushered Thandi into an ill-fated long distance relationship with Peter, the child’s father. Peter moves to New York to marry Thandi and raise their child, Mahpee, but all parties soon glean the untenability of Thandi’s building a new family without processing the grief of her original one. Though too restrained, there are some inspired moments, and Clemmons admirably balances the story’s myriad complicated themes.
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Starred review from May 1, 2017
In this inventive debut novel, a young woman writes her way out of grief.As a "strange in-betweener" with two mixed-race parents--a South African mother and an American father--Thandi must navigate the majority-white suburbs of Philadelphia, where she's "often mistaken for Hispanic or Asian, sometimes Jewish." "But you're not, like, a real black person," she's told as a young student, confirming her feeling that she was "never fully accepted by any race." When her mother dies of cancer, Thandi must come to terms with the loss--including her strongest link to family in Johannesburg. Caught between two continents--between American blackness and South Africa's legacy of apartheid--she sets out to discover what makes life worth living after tragedy hits. In the process, she produces an honest, propulsive account of grief, interrogating the relationship among death, sex, motherhood, and culture. Written in compact episodes that collage autofiction with '90s rap lyrics, hand-drawn graphs, blog entries, and photographs, the novel pushes restlessly against its own boundaries--like Thandi herself. Clemmons manages to write with economy without ever making her book feel small, and with humor and frankness, so the novel is not overly steeped in grief. This is a big, brainy drama told by a fearless, funny young woman--part philosophy, part sociology, and part ghost story. "My theory is that loneliness creates the feeling of haunting," Thandi confesses during a rough patch. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, prepare for Thandi's voice to follow you from room to room long after you put this book away. A compelling exploration of race, migration, and womanhood in contemporary America.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 1, 2017
Raised by a South African mother and an American father, Thandi walks the color line. Then she learns that her mother has cancer. Debuter Clemmons, who has a second novel signed, writes on the Black Lives Matter movement for Literary Hub.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust
“The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue
“Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker
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