Thandi and her family are coloureds and wealthy, so readers experience a different account of racial dynamics in South Africa through their lens, which is refreshing.

The world is so absorbed in American politics (aka: Trump) that we forget about the intense and ever present racism in post-apartheid South Africa. Johannesburg, South Africa plays a vital role in this novel.

I love how pictures and graphs and random news articles are scattered throughout the book, as it gave the storytelling an unconventional feel. Some bits of the text feel philosophical which was confusing at times, but appreciated. The vignettes reflect Thandi’s complex thoughts – private, absorbing and heartfelt thoughts, that one probably wouldn’t even share with their closest partner. If you’ve been following Clemmons’s work online, especially her 2013 piece – A Geography of Hurt, you’d find the subject matter in this novel familiar. While there isn’t a clear-cut plot to this novel, Clemmons successfully portrays Thandi’s life through short vignettes. What We Lose is based on Zinzi Clemmons’s life, BUT it isn’t her life. Readers follow Thandi on her journey from childhood to adulthood as she navigates what it means to be a black woman in America and South Africa, dealing with the loss of a loved one, motherhood and love. Laden with meditative, intimate and at times unsettling vignettes, What We Lose will leave you in a pensive state. Thandi – the heroine of this novel, is the only child of her mother (a coloured South African) and father (a light skinned African American) who is very aware of her privileges & multicultural background. 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. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. 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. 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. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present.

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.

What we lose zinzi