It feels like a quiet life, but it’s mine. I’ve tried to build my own small world in the vastness, and it’s helping: I’m feeling more and more like the person I was, or the person I might become.
Caleb Azumah has done it the second time. It’s as good as the first, and he still stays on top. There is something about Caleb’s writing that is distinct, almost new, and refreshing. His storytelling doesn’t focus on the plot; it focuses on the character, the emotions in the sentences, the sighs, and the commas.
I call Mum. She asks how I am, have I eaten? I say no, but homo ye mi. I’m hungry. What I do not say is that I am hungry for something I have lost.
This book explores relationships, masculinity, vulnerability, love, longing, loss, questioning, finding, family, belonging, and growing.
Caleb focuses a lot on parent-children relationships, the intimacies, and the unsaid words, what makes parents expect much from their children, their dead dreams, the ones they had to let go of, and the ones they sacrificed.
He explores how parents want their kids to fit a specific mold, like “you need to make money, so do whatever conventional job that will bring you money and stability quickly,” and be in survival mode instead of discovery. Something like “Don’t take time to know yourself or decide what you fit into. Singing or art is no job and doesn’t bring the money.”
Caleb explores this part of parenthood so well. It made me feel sorry for our parents because they had no space to feel and want something so bad, as they were always in survival mode. It is such a sad way to live.
Who are you? What do you dream of?
What Caleb does with Small Worlds is that he forces us to question our knowledge of our parents. Stephen, one of the book’s characters, constantly looks at his hot-tempered father, wondering who he was, who he was, what he ever dreamed of, and what he ever gave up. He yearns to know who his parents were before they became his parents. He wants his father to tell him who he was before he became his father, asking questions regarding what he did with his spare time, what his favorite things to do were, and what he wanted from life. He also asks himself these questions.
I also love how Caleb’s books focus on masculine vulnerability. He created a world where it was okay for men to cry, to cry to their brothers, for a father to cry in front of his son, and for a son to cry to his mother. I love that world, and it was beautiful and soft to read.
Small Worlds is an excellent write. It’s so beautiful you never get over the storytelling.
I love how Caleb showed how we build our small worlds within this world that we live in. He showed that it’s not just one world but many small worlds we craft for ourselves in this big world, and when our small worlds come apart, we fracture, we hurt, but we move on by building another world for ourselves again. That we are constantly changing and wanting things that we thought we could never want, but in the midst of it all, we live, we breathe, and we also discover ourselves.
I mourn the safety. I mourn our rhythms. I mourn the loop. I mourn the space. I cry until there’s nothing left.
The interesting thing about Caleb’s stories is that you are never able to tell the story to another person. It’s not enough. They won’t get it. You are never able to describe anything because it’s better felt than retold.
When Caleb writes, he spins magic!
What I didn’t like about the writing was the italicizing of the Ga words. I feel like they don’t have to be italicized, and it irks me when I see that. Ga is a language, too, so write it the way it is.
So, twice in a row and twice as good- I am officially a Caleb Azumah Nelson fan, and he is on the top of my author recommendation list. Nobody does the lyrical poetry prose thing better than Caleb, nobody.
This is one of the most anticipated books in 2023, so keep your fingers crossed. When it is released, grab a copy for yourself.
Favorite Quotes
I don’t know what it means to move from one place to another, to make a home for yourself; to try and build a life from uncertainty. To have to do this alone, away from the people you love. I don’t know how this feels, so sometimes, like today, I ask
With every year that passes, the bond between my parents and Ghana begins to weaken. When they go back, they are treated like foreigners who have suddenly realized their heritage and are making a big return. They are expected to care for everyone, in monetary form or in gifts. To go back home is to wrangle with who you are against who everyone thinks you should be. It must be a strange feeling that this place my parents have longed for, a place they used to call home, could also reject them in their current form, could ask them to be someone else.
…grief makes language useless, and that only sounds might suffice
I pray then, like I’ve never prayed before, asking not for money, or a job, but that this new world I’m walking out into, this new world I’m building for myself, I ask that it be constructed from peace.
Sound helps us get closer to what we feel. Besides, language always has to be so exact and I never know exactly how I feel
