A Girl Is a Body of Water | 
pickI call Makumbi a griot because of her dexterity with history and tradition in her novels. She tells heavy truth with the care and cunning that characterizes a generation‘s way of pushing back and centering what truly should be centered. This novel is beautiful with its depiction of sisterhood & solidarity in a time where all we are officially taught to respect are ‘modern‘ waves. It teaches of a history and people with such effortless grace
Whelp! I gave it my best shot but my Ugandan chapati definitely turned more like naan. Not soft enough to roll into Rolex but tasty. That was fun! #FoodandLit @Catsandbooks @Texreader
bailedi couldn‘t finish this novel because its a lot to read. i plan on finishing it at another time. nothing against the author, but i can‘t give the author the respect the novel deserves by not giving my full attention to it.
#bookspinbingo
#foodandlit2023
pick5/5 ⭐️ A beautiful coming of age story about a girl in Uganda. You see how all the members of her community and family play a role in her life. Themes of feminism in a culture that is male dominated. Strong female characters. I only wish there was a glossary for the many ugandan words, just to add to more of my understanding and enjoyment.
#FoodandLit Uganda 🇺🇬
pickKirabo‘s journey through childhood to young adult to find her mother and her way in 1970s Uganda was beautifully written. I kept drawing comparisons to the heroines in Jane Austen I was rereading for another book club. Both authors are exploring what it means to be women bound by their societies‘ expectations while dreaming of more. I‘m so glad I read this book with #FoodandLit for our look at #Uganda.
@Texreader @Catsandbooks
First readathon of 2023! #joyousjanuary Hoping to finish 2 books by the end of the readathon.
💙 #FoodandLit A Girl is a body of water
💙 #sundaybuddyread The Godmothers
💙 #roll100 The Prison Healer
💙 Afterlove
My pick for #foodandlit January 2023 - Uganda!
Jennifer Nansubaga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist (with links to Lancaster University - I was born in Lancaster!!) who according to Goodreads lives in Manchester (near to where I grew up!)🙌 It's about a Ugandan girl called Kirabo and seems to be set in Uganda too😊
#JumpStart2023 🎉 Planning my challenges and first reads for 2023!
#LitsyCrafters
#FoodandLit
#sundaybuddyread
#littensloveromance
#roll100
#pantone2023
pickI have such mixed feelings about this one. It tells Kirabo‘s story of searching for the mother she‘s never known while deepening her understanding of her other family ties. It is fundamentally about family, but there‘s very little plot in it and I found it hard to get into. It does have great characters and a gorgeous cover. A soft pick for me.
#ReadingAfrica2022 #Uganda
pickSo glad that I finally got around to reading this wonderful novel. A coming of age story in 1980's Uganda. Wonderful writing about women and how we fit into the patriarchy. I am excited to read her other novel. 4 🌟, well worth a read. I read this for #invisiblecities, #bigbooks and #bookspinbingo.
Ozzie is my reading buddy as I tackle the last of the Great Group Reads books so I can blurb them for the website.
I‘m struggling to get into this book but this paragraph stopped me in my tracks. Isn‘t this the truth?
82 >> Kirabo consults the “blind witch” Nsuuta, her grandmother‘s friend and rival... “Remember one thing —when it comes to persecuting women, we are most vicious to ourselves.”
326 >>”Thus, if Alikisa and Nsuuta were going to step into the terrible rest-of-their-lives called marriage, taking a best friend along was a good strategy.” Older generation of female friends plan to share a husband, contrasts Kirabo and Giibwa‘s fight over Sio.
pickSprawling Ugandan family saga & coming-of-age story: Kirabo raised by paternal grandparents in village of Nattetta, desperate to know her mother. Culture shock as she goes to live with father Tom in Kampala for schooling. Women as witches, women as water. Family, abandonment, female strength. Rural vs. urban, tradition vs. cultural change. Kirabo‘s stubborn strength pulls a lengthy narrative forward. Grandmothers dance naked in the rain. 2020
‘Grandfather‘s mantra was “A girl uneducated is an oppressed wife in the making.”‘
pickThis was a new feel to a more natural way of growing up in a, more or less, deranged family stuck between tradition and modern ways. At the tender age of 13, Kirabo is thrust into a world of womanhood of questions. Who is her mother: grandmother who raised her? Aunt who looks after her? Or mother who abounded her at birth? Her story is one of determining who she is; fighting rebelliousness with wanting education. Lasting connections are everything
[about the pregnant girls leaving]
You would think St. Theresa‘s, with all its ‘Us women in this together‘ stance, would be sympathetic to girls in these circumstances. Especially because throwing girls out of education ensured one thing: their babies would be born into poverty. When the girls were led out of the San to get on the school bus, Kirabo pondered. The boys who had made them pregnant would carry on as before, their lives uninterrupted
I like how the book is set within different stages of Kirabos life. From a quiet existence with her grandparents in a small rural town, to living with her father and step-mom in the city. Such change in perspective. I‘m starting to get the idea of how girls are like bodies of water through all she has to go through growing up in this estranged family. About half half, and it‘s still just so fresh and easy to flow through
Really enjoying this way of thinking on women. Sad to hear the story that men used that process to say they own the land because they are of the land, since women are of the water.
“How many of our stories link women to water?”
Really liked this chapter, meeting a “real” witch. The same for this thought; that she is a witch because she does what she is asked not to do.
After two weeks of working daily without a break (not a bad thing, just tiring), I had the urge to open my gifts, so I did! Thank you SO much, Soubhi! I love everything, and I may have squealed when I saw the tagged book. 😬 I‘m looking forward to each and every one of these. 😊
pickGood coming of age novel about a young girl in Uganda. Spanning many years and many characters, Makumbi takes the reader through a lot of events in 544 pages. It‘s a page turner and is well written. It‘s not one of my top of 2020, but good nonetheless.
pick560 pages of great writing! Yes it is a long read, but it is so worth it.
"...we are our circumstances. And until we have experienced all the circumstances the world can throw at us, seen all the versions we can be, we cannot claim to know ourselves. How, then, do we start to know someone else?"
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The book came out today! I‘m only a few chapters in and I love it!
🎉IT‘S NEW BOOK DAY!🎉 There are a TON of great books coming out today! And there are even more that I am excited about but don‘t have physical copies to photograph, including Before the Ever After, Cemetery Boys, Fangs, Having and Been Had, His Only Wife, The Lying Life of Adults, Night of the Mannequins, Fifty Words for Rain, Punching the Air, Mill Town, Daddy: Stories, Red Pill, and The Bass Rock. What are you excited to read? 📚❤️📚
• For the past few days, I've been checking the mail with sad face because of the delay in processing giveaways. This one finally arrived today and I couldn't be happier!! I was starting to think it wasn't coming. From Tin House press •
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