What We Lose (Clemmons)

What We Lose 
Zinzi Clemmons, 2017
Penguin Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735221710


Summary
A stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present.

She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. 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.

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.

Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. 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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984-85
• Raised—Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Zinzi Clemmons is an American writer, teacher, and editor, whose debut novel What We Lose was published to wide acclaim in 2017. She was raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, by a mixed race South African mother and African-American father—and, like her novel's heroine, knows what it feels like to be an outsider. Swarthmore is a mostly white college town (yes, Swarthmore College) outside of Philadelphia: "we were the only black family, and foreign," Clemmons has said. Summers spent in Johannesburg, South Africa, only added to a sense of displacement. And, importantly, like her heroine, she too lost a mother.

Clemmons received her Bachelor's degree at Brown and Master's in Fiction from Columbia. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Transition, Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She is also a co-founder and former Publisher of Apogee Journal and a Contributing Editor to LitHub.com.

Married to poet and translator Andre Naffis-Sahely, Clemmons now lives in Los Angeles where she teaches literature and creative writing at The Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College. (Adapted from various online sources.)

Book Reviews
A stunning debut novel about a young African American woman and the kaleidoscope of identity.
Los Angeles Daily News


Potent.… A loosely autobiographical exorcism of grief. Boldly innovative and frankly sexual, the collage-like novel mixes hand-drawn charts, archival photographs, rap lyrics, sharp disquisitions on the Mandelas and Oscar Pistorius, and singular meditations on racism’s brutal intimacies..… A novel as visceral as it is cerebral, never letting us forget, over the course of its improbably expansive 200 pages, the feeling of untameable grief in the body.… One can’t help but think of Clemmons as in the running to be the next-generation Claudia Rankine.
Megan O’Grady - Vogue


Contrasting what it means to be black in America with being black in Johannesburg, where her mother’s relatives still live, Clemmons presents a brutally honest yet nuanced view of contemporary identity.… Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.
Nicole Dennis-Benn - Oprah Magazine
 

This affecting novel combines autobiographical vignettes with photos and pertinent charts—one tracks longevity by race—as the narrator reckons with her loss.
People


Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose, her debut. Young Thandi, our heroine, grows up in Pennsylvania feeling like a fish on a bicycle. Why? As a biracial woman whose mother hails from Johannesburg, South Africa, she struggles to define home. In Clemmons’s hands the book is a remarkable journey.
Patrick Henry Bass - Essence


This intimate novel from a talented new writer follows Thandi, a Philadelphia girl with a South African mom, who has a complicated relationship with her place in the world. Through prose, text messages, photos, and book excerpts, the cornucopia of storytelling activates all the feels.
Steph Opitz - Marie Claire


Clemmons’ debut novel is a stunning work about growing up, losing your parents, and being an outsider. Perfect for fans of tangled immigrant stories like Americanah.
Glamour.com
 

Stunning.… What We Lose doesn’t attempt to answer any of the questions it raises. Instead, it dwells in them—in ways that are sad, sometimes funny—and gives readers a sense of what it’s like to be constantly haunted in that headspace.
Kevin Nguyen - GQ.com


Zinzi Clemmons’ powerful debut novel tells the story of Thandi, a woman raised in Philadelphia who’s struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother, who left behind a complicated legacy of her own.
Cosmopolitan.com


This hauntingly honest novel celebrates the coming-of-age tale of a young African-American woman who chooses to live vibrantly in the face of loss, adversity, and devastation. Promised to be one of the most influential new voices in fiction, Zinzi Clemmons is a must for any serious beach reader. This is 2017’s most raw literary display of female emotions.
Redbook


Exacting reflections on race, mourning, and family are at the center of this novel about a college student whose mother dies of cancer.… Though too restrained, there are some inspired moments, and Clemmons admirably balances the story’s myriad complicated themes.
Publishers Weekly


Raised by a South African mother and an American father, Thandi walks the color line. Then she learns that her mother has cancer. Debuter Clemmons, who has a second novel signed, writes on the Black Lives Matter movement for Literary Hub.
Library Journal


The much-anticipated debut from Clemmons unfolds through poignant vignettes and centers on the daughter of an immigrant. Raised in Philadelphia, Thandi is the daughter of a South African mother and an American father. Her identity is split, and when her mother dies, Thandi begins a moving, multidimensional exploration of grief and loss.
BookPage


(Starred review.) Spectacular.… Clemmons performs an exceptional sleight of hand that is both affecting and illuminating.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A big, brainy drama told by a fearless, funny young woman.… Prepare for Thandi’s voice to follow you from room to room long after you put this book away. A compelling exploration of race, migration, and womanhood in contemporary America.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for What We Lose ... then take off on your own:

1. Thandi and her mother's relationship is at the center of this novel. How would you describe it? What issues are at the heart of their disagreements? Consider immigration, motherhood, gender.

2. How would you describe Thandi? What contributes to her sense of feeling like an outsider? Have you ever experienced a sense of not belonging?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: Thandi has been told "But you're not, like, a real black person." How does this add to her sense of alienation?

4. In what ways does her mother's death affect Thandi. Talk about how her grief manifests itself in decisions that may not be the best for her future.

5. Thandi confesses, "My theory is that loneliness creates the feeling of haunting." What does she mean?

6. Zinzi Clemmons' novel is a cornucopia of storytelling. Her narrative incorporates hand-drawn charts, photographs, rap lyrics, philosophical meditations on things as varied as the Mandelas and racism. How do these devices add to or detract from your experience of reading the novel?

7. How is being black in American different from being black in Johannesburg.

8. How does Thandi come to see her place in the world? How does she finally come to grips with her identity? Does she ever find home…or feel at home?

9. This novel, mostly about grief, is in parts funny. Where do you find humor?

10. Talk about the significance of the book's title.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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