Simply Writing

innerchildchronicles.medium.com

[firstfullmoon]

Leila Chatti, “I Too Was Worthy,” in Wildness Before Something Sublime

[words-and-whispers]

Surrounded by your things I feel alone.

Being where you spent so much time, your fingerprints on everything, your mind on display I feel overwhelmed.

I miss you.

I always will.

I try to take deep breaths, but I can't.

I try to sleep, but my mind won't let me.

No matter how prepared I was, I would never have been ready.

I will always carry you inside me.

Love does not stop, simply because we are in different environments.

[misstepkatherine]

What was odd about this book, the title and its implications, was the suggestion of malelessness as somewhat equivalent to incompletion.

It went beyond depicting the psychological effects of life without the imagery and experience of men but rather all these interlinking realities of a post apocalyptic reality, worse in a world that is unknown, foreign in landscape, incomplete in the most monotonous way, missing all the diversifying elements and landscapes of the world we know. Almost a metaphor maybe to the homogeneous reality she existed in.

Everything about this setting screamed inhuman, removed, including the reality of the protagonist which had a void emotional aspect. Her unknown nature was over-amplified even to women themselves which did not seem realistic but fitting. From her age, to her growth and understanding, her unknown origin, she herself became a mystery in an alien world. Her desires were alien, her drives unempathetic, her existence hopeless. She experienced isolation long before the passing of her companions in a manner that was almost alien in itself, and she never quiet experienced love even for her fellow companions, her emotional development seemingly stunted and disconnected.

In this I say it was a brilliant book with an uncomfortable concept less because of the title or the lack of male counterparts and more because of the alien experience that had everything to do with everything else. A year later I still do not know how to feel about it other than slight horror for an existence that untethered, even from the one thing it could have been tethered to: The women she grew up with. It maybe served as a better allegory for loneliness more than a depiction of what life would look like without men in it.

[electricraccoonincident-deactiv]

– Louise Bourgeois, detail from 10 am is When You Come to Me (2006)

[misstepkatherine]

I don’t know about you but I cried and journaled last night.

[misstepkatherine]

10 May 2026 - 18:36 An oldie but still a goldie

[misstepkatherine]

Man I love Art. I wish Art loved me back :(

[bonivers]

(girl who is already extremely private) i think i need to Move In More Silence

[misstepkatherine]

"I am inclined to pray, but on principle, I don't. God is not for women. He is for the fruit. He makes you want and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep, he plants a seed in your womb that will be born to die."

Luster - Raven Leilani

[misstepkatherine]

Tumblr

The only place I am brave enough to post on after months of social inertia.

[shelloil]

guess who just spent their one precious human life in pointless toil

[misstepkatherine]

21:19 Thursday 6 November 2025

[ohevoyev]

lisa peterson and denis o’hare, an iliad

[misstepkatherine]

No one:

Absolutely nobody:

Me: Gets deeply motivated to write everything while half asleep.

[havingapoemwithyou]

Pale colors in a tall field by Carl Phillips

[misstepkatherine]

New phone, couldn't figure out how to put on predictive text the whole day. My knees are shaking with the effort it took to type out full sentences. Let alone correct typos myself!!

[misstepkatherine]

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

At first I thought what was condemned and misunderstood about this book by contemporary, modern day African writers was the purpose of the book. That it by all intents and purposes was a book meant for the Africans, the whimsy of writing out our own experiences, tradition and religion from an unpainted perspective. The initiation of a white antagonist changed the whole dynamic. Suddenly what was meant to expand on the imagination of an African, developing community is retrospectively portrayed as backwards and misguided. I did not mind the brutal portrayal of a religious community if it was not juxtaposed against a "merciful", "superior" practice that diminishes the substance of these peoples lives. The substance of the development they could have propelled or ushered into their own community through time and internal conflict. But it was more a horror than anything else, if not for the storyline then the effect and message behind it.

I wish this book was not praised as an example of African literature that so distinctly paints us through the eyes of the conqueror, masked by the narrative perspective of the African man. If there's any good it has done it was to raise a generation of writers who wished to dispel its notions. We were a complete people before the colonisation of our nations with knowledge and practice that was not based on superstition. Though no history book may tell the story of the conquered without bias, there is no question of our complete existence that demanded the erasure of its dignity. Through language, through religion, through education, the colonial conquest was a brutal appropriation of our unique futures and identities. Chinua portrayed this well and somehow still managed to diminish the personhood of the African. Inviting the acceptance of uninformed criticism empowered by the origins of the author. All of a sudden the historic crusade seems justified in the correction of a murderous people. A disappointing revelation. Thank God for the Chimamanda's, Tsitsi Dangarembga's and Akwaeke Emezi's that would follow after this legacy. To read into an African experience that enforced the heart of an existing people, a complex people, a widely discerning people.

Edit:

I've calmed down a bit. The book was a bit more nuanced than this.