Kimbilio Fellow Ijeoma Njaka writing about Kimbilio Faculty Member Martha Southgate’s THE FALL OF ROME

I have always been captivated by big, grand, absolutist words. Words that name clear edges or hard stops or lines crossed—the finite, unequivocal, forbidden, unforgivable, irrevocable. Words that evoke how something is clear or clear-cut in ways that end confusion or questions. These are words that are almost historic or classical, with cognizable wisdom, that elicit reverence. These are words that quiet.

My earliest memory of grappling with one of these words was when I was about seven. There was a stretch of my childhood when my middle sister and I did not get along. Sometimes we hit each other, and sometimes I spat in her face, but mostly, we yelled at each other. Being as young as I was, I mostly trafficked in screaming at her to shut up or how stupid she was.

Read the rest of the essay on the Mahogany Books website at this link: https://blackbooksmatter.com/big-wrongs-big-words/?fbclid=IwAR0PSOaQoKIrT2PAvxSSp-IGTFfal68M8g-gQExOt9lCw4b-K04FdCvnP9k