A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 HonoreeNBCC John Leonard First Book Prize FinalistAspen Words Literary Prize FinalistNamed 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, … 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 pulls something off in What We Lose that I didn’t think was possible. She creates, in so many ways, a new form or new narrative structure necessarily to explore the creases in how gendered, raced and placed identities and desire are formed. But she doesn’t stop there. What We Lose is as much about the desire to be delivered from memory and imagination as it is about love, motherhood, and death. Clemmons somehow crafts a book that feels familiar and wholly innovative. This searing novel is a marvel that might change how we write and think about love, loss, place, gender and race for decades to come.
It takes a rare, gifted writer to make her readers look at day-to-day aspects of the world around them anew. Zinzi Clemmons is one such writer. What We Lose immerses us in a world of complex ideas and issues with ease. Clemmons imbues each aspect of this novel with clear, nuanced thinking and emotional heft. Part meditation on loss, part examination of identity as it relates to ethnicity, nationality, gender and class, and part intimate look at one woman’s coming of age, What We Lose announces a talented new voice in fiction.
Can’t add much to the critics except to say it is a relief to read something fresh and honest.
Could not get into it. I did not like the writing.
Written in a style that made it very easy to read through quickly. The story was interesting and different.
A different perspective on personal loss and how people of different cultures deal with it.
Sad but good story about Losing a parent.
I would have liked this book more 45 years ago when I was in my twenties.
Zinzi Clemmons’ first book heralds the work of a new writer with a true and lasting voice—one that is just right for our complicated millennium. Bright and filled with shadows, humor, and trenchant insights into what it means to have a heart divided by different cultures, What We Lose is a win, just right for the ages.
An intimate narrative that often makes another life as believable as your own.
I love how Zinzi Clemmons complicates identity in What We Lose. Her main character is both South African and American, privileged and outsider, driven by desire and gutted by grief. This is a piercingly beautiful first novel.
Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit—wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons’s debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored.
Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart.
When we think of loss many thoughts will pass through our mind some a flicker of feeling and some with a profound sadness that one cannot put into words. What We Lose is a mixture of vignettes about loss but is written as heart breaking moments as Thandi moves to and achieves adulthood. Clemmons writes in sections of one to two pages which tell a complete story but seem more like reading dashes of thoughts about her and how she deals with time passing. A thought provoking and timeless book that is a worthy read. Ignore but read the few pages of adult situations because they do give meaning to Thandi’s story. This book will give you pause long after you close the covers.
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