Tope

Last year, I was commissioned by @tender.photo to write a short story in response to a photographer's body of work. It was with @lidudumalingani who I first knew as an award winning writer, before knowing as a photographer. When I received my brief and his photos, my first thought was why me? Themes like #femicide and #GBV weigh very heavily. But as I fleshed out ideas for this story, researching, thinking, tinkering, conscious about what it means to write for preservation of memory, including violent memory, I thought, why not me? Lidudu's porfolio is called Sites of Mourning, with images that bare witness to exact places where women were killed or dumped after being killed. Ordinary places, like football fields, post offices or churches. My story follows two young women, a Nigerian and a South African, who are part witnesses to men's violence against women and the ways in which wealth and ambition interplay with their navigation of the event. The women represent the physical sites of evil and violence, and I wanted to explore the ways in which women's bodies carry this evil. Sombering, but almost very casually.  A rememberance of sort. It's a little bit of a tense read, so here's my attempt at a cautious/trigger warning.  With the length of this, not sure we can call this a short story anymore. But I hope you feel something when you read this. Thank you to my incredible editor, @adebolarayo who treats everything I write with extraordinary care and critique at the same time. She came to this work with the urgency and tenderness it so deserves. Thanks to my friend, @damionwah for shaping South Africa for me through a precise teenage lens. A lens so specific, even my trip there in October would never have helped me do the magnitude of the story justice. Thank you @theayobamiadebayo for directing the process all of these many months and chaperoning it to the finish line. ❤️ Link to read is in the usual place.

There is no name for a grieving mother, For she whose eyes have beheld evil. The evil of her offspring transitioning before her. Widow for wife, orphan for child, there is no name for a grieving mother. The abomination stuns to rage. To crushing sorrow. To silence. The grief is indislodgeable. There is no kid size coffin. No matter the craftmanship, the grain of the oak or the luxurious polish of the mahogany, it will never fit. The weight of it is too heavy. The burden on the shoulder crushing. The sight of it is the worst nightmare. Bereaved Brokenhearted Burrowed in eternal disbelief. There is no name for a grieving mother, For she who stands alone and wails into the darkness; This is against the natural order. Her brain cannot, will not settle this dispute We surround her in the hygienic ritual of weeping. Cleansing the soul. We collect the sorrow for her, drip by drip in a jar, not one drop to be lost. Binding her wounded heart with fingerprints of warm words; comfort ye, comfort ye noiseless, like the flap of butterfly wings, like the gentle closing of the eyes In her palm we map new paths for her, assign her a new designation. Blessed are you who mourn, Blessed are you, mother of an angel, Blessed are you. The mother of your child, still.

Recent Reads. My reading rotation over the last six or so weeks have been these four books. Companions through travel, commute, early morning and where possible, bed time reading. Did a part read/part listen to "Mother Mary Comes to Me" on Audible, because Roy herself narrated her book. It felt more engaging and descriptive hearing her voice carry her words. Wedding People by Alison Espach Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy One of Us by Elizabeth Day What are you all currently reading?

Visit our website to read Site of Mourning, a short story by Temitope Owolabi, in response to Sites of Mourning, a series of newly commissioned photographs by the South African photographer @lidudumalingani #photography #africa #tenderphotos

There's not much to say about this book and Jeffrey Epstein that hasn't already been said. So even while I read the horrific details of "Nobody's Girl", I already determined I was not going to 'review' it. I do want to share a question/thought that hasn't left me since finishing this book though. Do you think evil specifically follows some people from childhood? Just like in the case of Virginia Giuffre? Even before meeting Epstein, Virginia already had it bad. Neglect, abuse suffered from her own father, family friend, neighborhood stranger etc. Its almost like evil can perch on you once and never let go forever. It is sickening. #sexualabuse #bookstagram

The church largely partakes in the abuse and debasement of women. This is a truth, and I say this even as a believing Christian. There's a lot happening around the world right now that I could be writing about, I know that too, but we are also not going to gloss over the Espstein files as they are a catalogue of the kind of opression women face in the church. In this essay, I have written with the historical context of the Bible being fundamentally patriarchal in mind. The leadership of men was mostly considered in both the writing and eventual canonization of scripture. The teaching of it remains so too. Till this day, the leadership of the church remains majorly male because of this bias, even though women served in every capacity, and ultimately were the first key witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. The untold stories of women diminish them while centering men. But we know without a doubt that Jesus honored and protected women. This is why biblical framing matters. The biases and lenses through which we retell Bible stories matter. And as long as a demeaning view of women remains in the church, abuse like the Epstein scale we are currently faced with is only a short step from them.  Link to read my full essay is in the usual spot. 🫶🏾

When it comes to literary fiction, Andrea Levy is one of my templates on how to tell a good short story. I want a beginning, a middle and an end. Play with form, plot however many arcs you want, flash back how ever many times you like, and let your characters even be the scum of the earth, just give me a distinct beginning, middle and end. Its a short story. It should not give me an unecessary headache. Experiment with everything else, not short stories. Please and thank you. Also, here's a reminder to read Andrea Levy, not only for university/classroom essential reading but for cultural impact, legacy and timelessness.

#Bookishthrowback Throwback to "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover, which was first published in 2016, ten years ago. The book began making the rounds again in 2024, after being made into a movie and the cast and crew fell into some internal drama and war which then blew all over Obasanjo's internet. Before the movie drama happened, there was a bit of controversy about the book author and marketing team not being upfront about domestic abuse and rape themes in the book but instead being marketed as more like a complicated love triangle. The lack of trigger warning felt to many people like a downplaying of the sensitive themes in the book. It was a decent read for me. Some questionable and almost predictable choice of character development by the author, like the abuser's rich sister becoming the survivor's best friend and working in her humble florist shop because well, rich enough to work in a flower shop that doesn't even pay a quarter of your monthly expense. Oh well oh well. Have you read this? Let me know ❤️ #ThrowbackThursday

For we who wrestle with our minds, Who believe the illogical frustrations it plagues us with Harpening in the space between feeling trapped and feeling guilty A manifest destiny of anhedonia and insomnia and self harm too. The roller coaster going down and up and down and away. For we who find ourselves entangled, in a web of elaborate doldrums In impossible spins and loops of exhaustion, a choking thing around the neck Holding on, afraid, the burden of the fear so viceral, so overwhelmingly urgent. For we who search for answers. Who disrupt the shape of our days with effort, Pressed to thinness to stay afloat Till all the air is sucked out to quietness And the reassurance that this lie could not be further from the truth only but a sliver. I invite you to the process of a lifetime. A routine walk of daily courage, marked by all the grief and all the pain and all the shame too. I invite you to look to the sun In tribute to your resilence, a silent beat of honour. An interruption. I invite you to look And see the gleaming radiance of your marvellous light.

Throwback to three years ago, (February 2023) when I first encountered Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. In Starling Days, we follow Mina and her husband, Oscar in a story that opens with Mina on the Washington Bridge attempting to jump. The police find her and call her husband, Oscar. And after this, we find that Mina has struggled with clinical depression and su!c!d@l thoughts for the entirety of their ten year marriage. Oscar gets them to move from New York to London in the hopes that the change of scenery does something for Mina and Mina purposely leaves all of her medication behind, including her birthcontrol pills. While the book explores the heartbreaking intricacies of a broken mind going through mental illness, it leans us gently towards a glimmer of hope that we can overcome our demons. This is the best part of the book for me, because in my opinion, hope no matter how fickle is always a good thing. I have to say that I find the idea that Mina was mostly left alone in the London home a little jarring. Yes, there was a tracker on her phone but her husband was often not present. Still, we can also make the case that it is because of his absence that she falls into the obsession she eventually finds herself entagled in. I'm always drawn to beautiful use of language that's not unnecessarily complicated in the bid to want to sound sophisticated and Starling Days delivers that. I have heard a few people say they would have liked a bit more character development for Mila. Look, you cant develop a character that is stuck in the dark. She has to come out to the light first. To everyone suffering through depression, I want you to know that I am rooting for you. Every day you try again is an act of bravery and I pray for that will to try again. #ThrowbackThursday #StarlingDays

The first book I read this year was The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. I first saw the movie adaptation as an ad on the bus and afterwards, by some dubious algorithm magic, I began to see the book relentlessly being pushed to my feed. I have not read a crime thriller since #GoneGirl. Make that atleast ten years. And now, after reading this and with Amazon bombarding me with the next thriller they think I might like, I have ordered The Housemaid's Secret and currently reading Everyone is Lying to You. You can consider me fantastically sucked in. Would the president of the crime thriller association please hand me my starter pack now? Thank you. So, maybe my crime thriller radar is not yet sharp but I thought that Millie's part in this book dragged for a bit. Instead of suspense and tension, it was really her foolishness that kept me reading, you know that feelimg of - let me just wait and see the extent to which foolishness lands this girl in trouble, which was good in some way, because I think the end was very nicely done. Good thing I didnt quit. I dont know about the cover blurb of the book saying - from behind closed doors, she sees everything. That girl did not see jack, nada, zilch. Couldn't even tell danger if it was staring her right in the nose. Eyes very open but brain very closed till the end. Sigh Anyway, good read. Liked it. I'm very open to all your crime thriller reccs. Let me know. Thank you. Hope your week is off to a great start? ❤️

Happy Valentine's Day. Here's a repeat photo from 2018. Hope you are all having a restful weekend. Love ❤️ Love ❤️ Love ❤️