What We Lose

A Novel

By: Zinzi Clemmons

Narrated by: Nicole Lewis

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist

Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust

“The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue

“Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker

“Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine

“Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home.” —Buzzfeed

“Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey.” —Essence

From an author of rare, haunting power, 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.

Difficult to stay in the present

The flashbacks maybe in vogue but there was an excessive number of them. It was at times difficult to keep track of what was present and what was history. Obviously she was very affected by her mother's death and it impacted every aspect of her life but listening to the book may have made it more difficult to follow.

Solid.

Not life altering, but good. Nice imagery and feeling but predictable. Straight forward story line and informative if you're not familiar with the apartheid.

What we lose

This book showed us how it was to grow up different and in different town and hears

so beautiful

As soon as I started listening I couldn't put it down. the structure was beautiful and the end indifinitive. Her situation and grief are so real and comparable that you find yourself looking for shadows of it in your own life. Thank you for this.

Very real & thought provoking

I enjoyed it, I thought it was very down-to-earth and very real and I especially liked it when she interjected with the African accent.
I enjoyed listening to her story.