Reading and Love Lessons from 'God Help the Child'

In a bid to escape everything I'm worrying about, I'm trying to read.

So I googled some books to read in your twenties, seeing as teen books are a bit hit and miss with me and I'm not ready to read about the monotony of marriage, and I've found a few that are interesting to me.

I'm starting with The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides which is so good already. The vocabulary has me a bit stumped but I'm especially enjoying it because of this. It's set at university which is already helping me to look forward to studying in Spain a little more (going back to uni is kinda daunting atm) and they're talking about places mentioned in Gossip Girl (which I love) like Brown University and the Upper East Side. It's all very exciting. I'm not sure I'll review it though. I feel like I'm in over my head with a lot of these novels. Like, I used to be smart but maybe I benefited from being in small schools with teachers that liked to focus on 'bright' pupils.

You can click this link for my book list so far http://scribbless.com/lists/list/315117

If you wanna keep reading this post, I'm gonna share an unfinished book review with you of an amazing novel I read. I couldn't finish the review for a number of reasons, (including the fact that the book is harrowing and Toni Morrison is such a phenomenal author) so forgive me if it's not up to scratch.

 

Love Lessons from Toni Morrison's 'God Help the Child' (A Review)

I really don't want to upset anyone so pay attention to the following trigger warnings.
TW: Abuse, sexual abuse, violence, racism

I'm not going to pretend this book was easy to read. It definitely wasn't and at times, I got confused at the point of it. It painfully discusses racism, colourism (the specific prejudice against darker skinned people within communities, like this Brazilian beauty queen, Nayara Justina) child sexual abuse and tumultuous upbringings. Many of the characters had been subjected to sexual abuse as children which was often written about in a way that surprised me, not exactly casual, but in a bored way like it was so common there was no build up or hesitation after a while. Like, 'This is what happened and this is why I'm fucked up now'. (This is not to say victims of abuse are a monolith, with the right support many recover well, the book just highlights how events in our childhoods can affect us in adulthood in ways we don't even realise as well as ones we emphasise).

So why did I even pick up such a heavy book? (Heavy as in difficult subject, not weight, the version I read was an eBook.) Well, I wanted to read a book by a black author and this book had a dark-skinned black woman on the cover so I thought it would be perfect.

It didn't quite work out like that.

I was repulsed by the colourism on the opening pages and the way the protagonist, Bride (Lula Ann), was treated awfully because of her "ugliness" by her lighter-skinned mother. Oddly (but rightly), Bride grew up to be considered absolutely stunning by everyone around her and she learnt how to use this to her advantage, but this didn't save her, which made the book heartbreakingly realistic.

The Love Lessons <3

• I learnt that there's lots of different types of love, degrees of love and that everyone thinks that their way of giving it is the best they could do, at least at the time
• Humans are strange. They treat other people how they think they'd like to be treated themselves but often it's the exact opposite
• Love is hard (maybe already knew that one)
• Time doesn't really heal. It just lets you move on, if you're equipped to

I'd recommend the book anyway, don't be scared or put off by anything I've said because the story, the twist and the impression the book leaves on you is immense and totally worth it. I'll definitely be reading more Toni Morrison books, one of them is recommended on my book list. Hopefully some of the other books I read will be just as valuable but a bit happier. I'll you know! Until next time, Antonia xx