Beauty In Identity

The best thing about the holidays for me is the lack of guilt. Finally, I can read novels without feeling guilty that I should devote that time to studying my academic books instead. I was holding my breath. Holding it very hard as the school session drew to a close because I couldn’t wait to pick a book guilt-free once again. In my time away from novels, however, I downloaded a lot. And the reason why I’m ecstatic is because of the type of books I downloaded.

I’m glad, truly glad that African writers are beginning to get the recognition they deserve. Not by any award giving establishments, but the people, by book lovers around the world. Growing up with Harlequin, Mills & Boons, and all the other publishers, and noticing that everyone around me who was a bibliophile also read these books, I wondered to myself if African authors weren’t good enough. That time, the only home people who we’d at least read their books were Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie and the likes.

But then I got older and newer African authors emerged, and the more I read their books, the more astounded I became. Weren’t people noticing this? Weren’t they seeing just how amazing Nigerian and Ghanaian books had become? Then I got back to TikTok and while I was pleased to be back on Booktok, I feared I’d see the same genre of books: Fantasy, Dark romance...the likes.

To my utter amazement, I was seeing home books. Nigerian novels, Ghanaian novels. I’d read a few and I knew how delightful they were, I was just so glad that others were seeing how delightful they were as well. Not like the other books aren’t good enough anymore or have fallen short of the mark, I’m just in the era of reading books by people who mostly share the same background as me and connecting with them the best way I know how, which is through their works.

And so, I went into a frenzy, downloading different books since I don’t have access to the hard copy at present. I started reading one a few weeks back, but it was a little bit too relatable. And so I dropped. But now that I feel a lot better, I’ve picked up the book again and I can’t wait to read the others and give my candid reviews on them.

The aim is to soak up as much life as I can from these books. Bask in the beauty that comes with culture, identity and basically, knock myself out with each word, each line, each chapter. I have just about a month till school reopens so while taking care of other offline duties, I’ll do my best to ensure I read at least half of these books.

The titles already look pretty inviting. I can’t begin to fathom the thought that must have gone into it because I know that the titles are symbolic of something deeper and profound which I’m bound to discover as I read the book. Can’t wait for that as well.

Kindly ignore some of the coughs different looking books there. Anyone who’s used to e-books would know that there’s no how you aim to download one book within a genre that you wouldn’t end up getting something extraneous. So yeah, the odd ones there are my little definition of extraneous. Lol

But yeah, let’s see how it goes. I’ll try to make reviews as I read to document my journey and to also encourage those that still think African books are subpar. Kudos to all the amazing writers and authors out there. You all deserve your flowers.

Jhymi🖤

P.S: Notice a purple cover on the first set of books, that was written by an amazing Nigerian here on Hive in person of @deraaa. Can't wait to give you guys a review of that as well!

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Other images are screenshots from my e-library.}

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