Ijeoma Umebinyuo is a poet and writer born in Nigeria. Questions for Ada is her first published collection of poems and prose. And what a glorious collection it is! Ijeoma was named one of the top contemporary poets emerging from Africa by Writivism. She is considered among Sub-Saharan Africa’s best modern poets.
Here is a selection of those that spoke to me :
“you are living
you are breathing
perhaps a bit hurt
perhaps a bit pained
but you are breathing
you are breathing
and that is enough to wake
the angels still living in your chest.”
“Tell me,at night,
do you ever weep for all the women through stages of your life
you refused to let bloom
all you folded in half,
buried in silence.”
“A God as woman as me
My sins as painful as hers.”
My favorite :
“Nobody warned you
that the women whose feet
you cut from running
would give birth to
daughters with wings.”
These are the kind of poems that bring you back from the edge no matter how deeply you are sinking into the abyss. At least for me….
I went back to her words so many times, they provided the life -bouy I needed at that moment. She writes truth to human pain.
I have the book on my IPad, which makes it more accessible than a physical book but I want a real book for the shelves as I believe that this is a book you want to keep forever. Her writing is real and raw.
My rating is a perfect 10/10!
Questions for Ada was published in 2016.
ISBN-13:978-1505984347
ISBN-10:1505984343
a life in sepia 