She Would Be King
You know when you hear about a bunch of good/new books, immediately put a hold on them at your local library, then end up with about 20 books coming in at once? She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore has been in that pile for me. I finally picked it up. (It's now overdue and if you've been following my stories, you'll see that a ton of library systems are tweaking and/or getting rid of the fine system. But not mine, so I'm currently dealing with guilt about keeping an item that someone else wants AND watching fines on my account ratchet up as sort of a virtual reprimand.)
Oh my. I'm nowhere near done with this book. But I will certainly be blogging about it when I *am* done. (FYI, this account is a fun offshoot of a blog — alifelyread.com — that I started in 2014 while my family and I were living in Ireland.)
When I first started it, I was thinking, "Hmmmm. It's got a bit of folklore in it. A bit of magic. I don't really know where this is going." I still don't know exactly where it's going because, as I said...not done yet! (Sorry, person waiting for this book.) But what has sort of punched me in the gut thus far is how Moore writes about extreme exclusion and about being completely "unseen" by others around us. "Punishment, especially the kind given by those who have nothing, can be a big and addictive thing. Cruel as it is, that small taste of power is juicy. It lasts long.”
Stay tuned: I'm gonna have a lot of thoughts about this one. I even made my husband pause The Sopranos last night because I felt like something in the episode was tying in to this book.
P.S. Check out Moore's nonprofit @onemoorebook! (So cool!)
P.P.S. Did you know that a mall is very conducive to working on weekend mornings? That’s where I am, and that document is full of great quotes from this book. (But I really am supposed to be working on something else. #ohwell)
originally published on instagram