Suzanne Vine

Teacher, writing coach, new to Nashville resident, former expat in Amsterdam, reader, writer.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@bencoates1 You should be chuffed! It was excellent. Gefeliciteerd!

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

Right now in Nashville!

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@gilbertcruz Link to virtual event not working!

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

https://t.co/aAXjp1IzgR

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@united Here we are at Nashville bna airport and we can’t board because you oversold First Class and no one will volunteer to step down off that throne? What about the rest of us paying customers board while you figure this out?

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW Was it just me, or was this the most terrifying part of the book? #ColgateLivingWriters #ColgateSummerRead

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW Is he just another slippery Pexton person who says one thing but means another? He’s just going to swim away when called out on his lies? (Sorry, couldn’t resist). And I confess I read to the end, so I know…

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@TheGrahamDuncan @ColgateLW I agree! The specificity of the details outlining exactly how Sahel cared for her mother are so powerful.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@yalcrabm @ColgateLW I’m confused about the Restoration Movement, too. Was that intentional? Like the villagers we don’t really know who they are. Are they connected to Pexton, a“greenwashing” effort to improve their image? They are “People who share no blood with us…determined to save us.” (131)

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW Chilling. No wonder some of them choose silence instead.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW I have struggled to learn a different language, and this seems familiar. You sometimes choose a word that sort of fits, but isn’t what someone who grew up with the language would use. Like using “blames” as a noun. Children do this, too. Love the “slightly stilted”s in the book.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@yalcrabm @ColgateLW That was a surprising list for a young girl! Maybe she would have read anything she found in her uncle’s room. But I agree with you the book titles make you think about what Thula’s role in the village might be in the future.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW I’ve had A Swim in the Pond on my to-read list for a long time. I love that TICHN cart idea. In my cart: how the people of Kosawa label outsiders: the Round One, the Sick One, the Leader, the Cute One, the Sweet One. They are all nameless to them. Mbue playing with othering??

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW @colgateuniv I had to go back and reread. I thought I had somehow missed the description of the massacre. Mbue makes us do the work here, imagining the left-out details. It’s also the way grown-up things happen when you’re a child. You don’t know the details, so you’re left to imagine.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW I have to confess I assumed at first all Pexton employees were American and white. And that Austin was as well. But of course the reality is much more complex than that. I wondered if Mbue is challenging our assumptions here.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW It sounds sadly familiar indeed.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW All 3 of those are related to identity?? Thinking of the NPR interview with Mbue you posted. How Americans assumed she was from Africa so she was poor, but she was not. Who gets to tell your story? Whose words?

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW So interesting. Esp. in the context of today’s world - of climate change and a global pandemic - where being a good parent is so intertwined with being a good citizen.

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW That’s the one on p.64 you started us off with, right?

[Suzanne Vine @zannevine]

@ColgateLW @colgateuniv Lots of vanishing in this book. Thula’s Papa and the other men also vanished in Bezam. And the children in Kosawa who died have vanished (in the eyes of Pexton anyway). The people of Kosawa are so insignificant to Pexton that they have vanished, too.