My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
Have I Lost My Resilience?
Like a weighted blanket, time can fold back upon itself and cloak me into a different space and time.
For several days, I had felt as if I were sleepwalking like two years ago when Jan was home for hospice.
During hospice, I showered Jan with love to the point that I felt depleted of energy and stamina.
When I kissed Jan on the final morning, I was unsure how or if I could continue to live.
A good friend called me in the afternoon and offered condolences. He said something I did not fully comprehend in my initial hours as a widow.
You are resilient, and that will help you on your journey. You will survive despite the pain you feel today.
One day at a time, I learned that resilience could and does help us to adapt. It became a secret power that allowed me to live fully despite having my body and soul shredded into a million pieces like the glass bottle we smashed on our wedding day.
Each day I gained strength and rebuilt my life by sharing Jan’s love.
Walking shrunk my waist and allowed my mind to wonder and think creatively.
Building on that foundation, I framed my new life with love and faith. The trusses of my gabled roof are my reading and my writing.
I will forever miss Jan, but with a new framework, I have regained a purpose by helping others.
As Jane Goodall wrote,
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
For forty-eight hours, my life has reverted to one devoid of meaning.
Am I no longer reslient? Did I lose my mojo?
I do not know, but my body and soul feel weak and hopeless.
Despite the many miles I walk daily, my legs fill like water balloons, yet I cannot give up. Jan’s love spurs me to impact the world not by sleepwalking but by making a difference. Can I do this?
My doubts overflow like high tide in the Bay of Fundy.
Despite my anxiety, I still hear Jan whispering her words of wisdom,
Richard, you are capable and strong, and I believe in you.
Soon the fog bank will break, and Jan’s undying love will let me regain my focus and continue to impact the world positively.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
The day Jan died, I wasn't sure how long I would live.
I still do not know, but none of us knows how many days we will live.
A good friend called the morning after the love of my life died to offer his sympathy and support.
He said, "You are resilient, and that will help you on your journey. You will survive despite the pain you feel today."
At that moment, I was unconvinced of his opinion.
But over time, my resilience has rebounded.
In Cranford, I Do Not Need a Car for Daily Errands
As I was lost in thought during my walk, I suddenly heard a familiar voice calling me. As the person got closer, I recognized my neighbor, Franco, carrying two large bags of bread. He shouted a greeting, saying, “Hey, Buddy, I’m right behind you!”
Walking to his shop, Venue 104, made me appreciate how fortunate I am to live in a neighborhood where most of my daily tasks can be accomplished on foot. The walkability score of my community is an impressive 96, which has been a tremendous help as I navigate my grief journey.
I’m also grateful to be an active member of several supportive communities that provide me with the necessary strength and encouragement. Without these connections, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
As Charlie Padavano says to Sylvie, one of his daughters, in Hello Beautiful.
We’re separated from the world by our own edges. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is.
Despite the difficulty in finding joy in life without Jan, I’m taking things one day at a time and discovering happiness in simple things like walking, faith, reading, and more.
Although I can never replace Jan, sharing her love helps me keep her memory alive in this new chapter of my life.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
I Live in Community and Reside in My Home!
As Charlie Padavano says to Sylvie, one of his daughters, in Hello Beautiful, "We're separated from the world by our own edges. We're all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is."
As a widow, it is sometimes difficult for me to appreciate the beauty of life without my beloved partner, Jan. However, I am learning to take things one day at a time and embrace life to the fullest. Although Jan's loss can never be replaced, I feel fortunate to have a supportive network that allows me to keep her spirit alive and share her love with others.
We can face life alone in fear or unite and support one another. For me, living interdependently in multiple communities has helped manage my grief..
Adding a New Node to My Network
“I am a friend of Rabbi Renee…”
“Wow, you know our Renee?”
I nodded yes to the question, which was the perfect icebreaker that could dismantle the largest glaciers in a nanosecond.
“Amazing that you joined us when you did not know anyone here. We always welcome strangers.”
I attended Second Night Seder at the Monmouth Reform Temple (MRT) in Tinton Falls for the second night of the Passover Seder.
Rabbi Renee, a friend and my rabbi will become the new religious leader at MRT on July 1.
To describe my arrival in Tinton Falls as a warm welcome would be several degrees lower than the enthusiasm that enveloped me.
Walking into a room with more than eighty congregants when the only person I knew was their new rabbi might have been daunting to some people, but I found it as easy as adding a new node to my community mesh network.
I live in a community mesh network (CMN), allowing me to move from one node to another. It is seamless, and adding a new node is as easy as 1-2-3.
My CMN reflects the reality of our real lives: we belong to multiple communities and must be able to move between them and remain interconnected.
Seamlessly moving between my communities of family, friends, neighbors, and faith strengthens each and makes me healthier.
Without my multi-community mesh network, I am unsure if I could have survived my grief journey.
It does not replace what I lost when Jan died, but my seamless network allows me to bring Jan’s spirit into my new life and share her love with everyone.
You must return next year when Renee will lead the seder,” several new friends said as I walked to my car.
I am still trying to figure out what to do next year, but I am happy to have added a new node to my community mesh network.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Seamlessly moving between these communities strengthens each one and makes me healthier. Everyone should consider creating community mesh networks. My multi-community mesh network has been a lifesaver throughout my grief journey.
Although it cannot replace what I lost, it allows me to bring my loved one's spirit into my new life and share her love with everyone.
The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!
The Secret Ingredient Makes It the Best!
“Honey, I’m feeling pretty hungry,” Jan said as I handed her the morning medication.
As her loving husband and caregiver, I asked what she had in mind. “I’m really in the mood for some Matzoh Brei,” she replied.
I wasn’t sure how to make it, so I headed downstairs to find a recipe.
“Wait a minute, you’ve never made Matzoh Brei before and you don’t even like it,” she reminded me. Jan quickly jotted down a recipe for me to follow.
In the kitchen, I followed her instructions step by step, with the only change I put in all my love into the Matzoh Brei. After some time, I went back upstairs and served her breakfast. I said, “Here you go, my love. Do you require anything else?”
Jan was in the middle of a call and shook her head negatively, so I quietly left the room and headed downstairs. As I reached the first floor, I overheard Jan exclaiming, “Wow, this is the best Matzoh Brei I’ve ever had!
I smiled as I continued to our living room, remembering my grandmother’s lesson. Following Jan’s directions, I prepared the Matzoh Brei and added the secret ingredient – love!
I received the news that I hoped never to hear two years ago today.
“I’m sorry to say this, but the only option for Janice is hospice,” Dr. Strair said.
Hearing those words, my stomach flipped, and I felt like it had jumped out of the window. The call had been about planning for Jan’s recovery, but now we were discussing her death.
Today, 24 months later, I still can’t eat Matzoh Brei, but my love for Jan remains strong.
I’ve learned that love never dies, and I take it one day at a time. Even though I miss Jan, I strive to share her passion for life and kindle the light from her effervescent smiles to repair the world.
Love is the elusive yet essential ingredient that makes life complete and fulfilling.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
My Meandering Mind Helped Me Live Fully!
Since I was a young child, I have been dreaming not at night but during the day.
Most, if not all, of my childhood dreams never came to fruition.
However, since Jan died, my walking has increased in both the distance and the creative dreaming I do.
As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Only ideas won by walking have any value.”
After sleepwalking thru the last two weeks of hospice and the first month or so after Jan died, my perambulations have intensified my brain’s default mode of mind wandering.
As Shane O’Mara‘s In Praise of Walking describes, mind wandering is “the repeated interrogation of autobiographical memory and a focus of attention from the immediate environment.”
On my early grief walks, my mind focused on doubts about Jan’s love, not the truth.
Walking sans headphones, I was able over time to accept that Jan’s love was transformative and that my only way forward was to share her passion as Merrit Malloy‘s poem Epitaph commands us,
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
One step at a time, the vision of Jan’s Memorial Garden formed in my mind, and bringing Jan’s spirit with me became a reality.
Neither my thoughts nor my footprints will be long remembered once I am gone.
But if, in some small way, they help keep Jan’s name alive and help repair the world, my meanderings will have been worth the thousands of steps I have taken.
I will always walk daily, and Jan’s love will never die!
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
A Future Walking With Jan’s Spirit
My sound test on Zoom is a simple chant.
I test the microphone by saying, "I love Jan! I miss Jan!"
The message proves the microphone works and adjusts my frame of mind, so I am ready, willing, and able to host the Zoom call.
Yet, the change in the atmosphere does not fill the gap left in my heart since Jan died.
The OMordy Quotes help me put into perspective my circumstances,
What's destroyed can still be rebuilt, what's lost can still be found, what's broken can still be mended, an end is not always the end, it can also be a basis for a new and better beginning.My life with Jan has been erased, and I cannot simply mend my brokenness.
Apartment 3B is Perfect for Me!
“Wow, your apartment looks so nice,” said Mike as he walked into my new home.
I had not had visitors to my home except when Nick visited me. It was lovely to have my family visiting for a family birthday celebration.
“It is so light and airy. Everything looks like it fits perfectly,” said Elyssa, my daughter-in-law.
I nodded in agreement.
I know you and Mom had to let go of a lot of furniture when you moved, and it looks like you had to allow even more go this time. But you have made this feel like a home.”
Standing before the ceremonial shovel, Nick and I mentioned that a TaskRabbit person had installed it and the photos.
“Hugo and Ana helped me determine what I could keep and helped me find a new home for items I no longer needed,” I explained as my lips began to shake.
“It looks so lovely you could rent it as an AIRBNB.”
I laughed.
“I need a place to live that meets my needs and keeps your mom’s spirit and love with me.”
As we had dinner, I remembered when Jan and I moved to Cranford in May 2018, we expected to live here for two years and then buy a condo.
Our plans did not work out, but moving from a three-bedroom ranch to a walkable downtown was more critical than we understood then.
If we had stayed where we lived, I am unsure how I would have survived without Jan. Overwhelmed and adrift, I would have been too attached to material things and lost like a kid in a candy store.
Instead, I am centered in overlapping communities where I can walk daily and live interdependently with my neighbors.
I will forever be grateful that Jan and I moved here, as living in supportive communities has been critical in managing my grief.
Jan’s love transformed me the day we met. Her love continues to shower me with her undying support and allows me to live fully, albeit alone, in Apartment 3B!
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Flowers Convert 3B Into a Home
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by Jess Row
The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!
The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.
In 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within–blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem).
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Clémence Michallon
Today, I commenced reading The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon. It is not my typical genre, as it is a pulse-pounding psychological thriller about a serial killer narrated by those closest to him: his 13-year-old daughter, his girlfriend—and the one victim he has spared.
Aidan Thomas is a hard-working family man and a somewhat beloved figure in the small upstate New York town where he lives. He’s the man who always lends a hand and has a good word for everyone. But Aidan has a dark secret he’s been keeping from everyone in town and those closest to him. He’s a kidnapper and serial killer. Aidan has murdered eight women, and there’s a ninth he has earmarked for death: Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed, fearing for her life.
When Aidan’s wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter Cecilia are forced to move. Aidan has no choice but to bring Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a “family friend“ who needs a place to stay. Aidan is betting on Rachel, after five years of captivity, being too brainwashed and fearful to attempt to escape. But Rachel is a fighter and survivor and recognizes Cecilia might be the lifeline she has waited for all these years. As Rachel tests the boundaries of her new living situation, she begins to form a tenuous connection with Cecilia. And when Emily, a local restaurant owner, develops a crush on the handsome widower, she finds herself drawn into Rachel and Cecilia’s orbit, dangerously close to discovering Aidan’s secret.
Told through the perspectives of Rachel, Cecilia, and Emily, The Quiet Tenant explores the psychological impact of Aidan’s crimes on the women in his life—and the bonds between those women that give them the strength to fight back. A searing thriller and an astute study of trauma, survival, and power dynamics, The Quiet Tenant is an electrifying debut thriller by a significant talent.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Quan Barry
When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry is a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as a pair of estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Since Jan died, I have been sharing her love and not looking for her, so this novel attracted me as it was a counter-narrative. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something more significant?
When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what is.
Although I know only a limited amount about Buddhism and even less about Mongolia, I found When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East a fascinating page-turner of a novel.
Coincidently, while en route to see Memorial, we stopped to eat at a Mexican-Peruvian restaurant on Tenth Avenue in NYC. On the television was a continuous loop of a travelogue on Mongolia.
I found several quotes that I have used in other posts already.
I plan to use others in future posts.
Love never dies, and this quote echoed my belief.
“Love is neither created nor destroyed. It exists at all times and in all dimensions. Love is not something we create—it is something that wells up in us, like sap in a tree. It is an element in the fabric of the universe. Even on that distant day when sentient beings no longer exist, Love carries on. Perhaps our personal relationship to Love is impermanent, but Love itself is not.”
I highly recommend When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama somewhere in the vast Mongolian landscape, the young monk Chuluun seeks the help of his identical twin, Mun, who was recognized as a reincarnation himself as a child but has since renounced their once shared monastic life.
Harking back to her vivid and magical first novel set in Vietnam, Quan Barry carries us across a landscape as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the stark Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khan. As their country stretches before them, questions of the immortal soul, along with more earthly matters of love, sex, and brotherhood, haunt the twins, who can hear each other’s thoughts.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Sean Michaels
I started reading “Do You Remember Being Born?” by Sean Michaels, a writer who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel is about an aging poet named Marian Ffarmer, a legend in the world of poetry. However, despite her success, she struggles with financial issues and her son’s inability to buy a house. Marian has sacrificed her personal relationships and happiness to pursue her career but questions whether it is worth it.
One day, she receives an invitation from a Tech Company to travel to California and work with their poetry AI, Charlotte. The company wants her to co-author a poem with their bot in a historic partnership, which clashes with Marian’s beliefs about the individual pursuit of art. However, she decides to take this opportunity, even though it makes her feel like a sell-out and a skeptic. The encounter in California changes her life, work, and understanding of kinship.
The book explores the nature of language, art, labor, capital, family, and community. It’s a response to some of the most disquieting questions of our time. The author, Sean Michaels, is a winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his book is a love letter to and interrogation of the creative legacy. It’s a joyful recognition that belonging to one’s art must mean belonging to the world to survive meaningfully.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Jenny Offil
Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offil was a book that I was confused and uncertain if I wanted to finish for the first few pages. I am delighted that I did, and I highly recommend this book. Its brief diary-like dispatches about life in our time when we sense that we may all be doomed to a climate catastrophe made this a book I truly enjoyed reading. The subtext of the rise of right-wing strongmen in the USA and abroad adds to the crisis her dispatches describe.
Her Obligatory Note of Hope challenges all of us to engage in solutions instead of accepting doom.
How can we contribute to the common good? There are people all over the world trying to answer these questions. In big ways but also in small ways. In grand leaps but also in fits and starts.
I always thought it was ridiculous to try and fight for social change when I couldn’t even get my own house in order. How could a meat-eating, plane-flying, march-hating person like me ever find a place in the climate justice movement? But then I started to read about all the different ways ordinary people were refusing to give into fatalism and were exploring the possibilities of what they could do, what they might fight for in this half-ruined world of ours.
There were saints among these accidental activists, but also stone-cold hypocrites like me. Slowly, I began to see collective action as the antidote to my dithering and despair.
There’s a way in for everyone. Aren’t you tired of all this fear and dread?
Goodreads provides an overview of the book if you are not yet convinced to read it.
Lizzie Benson is a very relatable woman who slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: a fake shrink. She has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother for years. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with her husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, proposes. She wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers concerned about the decline of western civilization. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.
As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you’ve seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience. But she still tries to save everyone, using everything she’s learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, floundering the library stacks her years of wa.. And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in—funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Ben Jealous
Today, I started reading “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing” by Ben Jealous, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. The book highlights how the path to healing America’s broken heart begins with each of us having the courage to heal ourselves. According to Mr. Jealous, it would be transformative if every American treated each other as cousins.
Ben Jealous is the son of parents who had to leave Maryland because their cross-racial marriage was illegal.
I briefly met Ben Jealous last May when I went to Washington with the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism‘s Day of Action. When I saw Mr. Jealous speaking at Temple Emanu-El in neighboring Westfield, I immediately signed up to attend in person. He is an inspiration as an advocate for the environment, civil rights, and the healing of America’s broken heart.
His lively, courageous, and empathetic storytelling calls on every American to look past deeply cut divisions and recognize that we are all in the same boat now. Along the way, Jealous grapples with hidden American mysteries, including:
The book Never Forget Our People Were Always Free is told through parables. It features intimate glimpses of political and faith leaders such as Jack Kemp, Stacey Abrams, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The book also highlights unlikely heroes such as a retired constable, a female pirate from Madagascar, a long-lost Irishman, a death row inmate, and a man with a Confederate flag over his heart.
Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers readers hope that America’s oldest wounds can heal and her oldest divisions can be overcome.
Although I have only read a handful of pages of the book, I highly recommend it!
by Afia Atakora
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora is about a mother and her daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses — at the heart of this dazzling first novel. Conjure Women takes place before, during, and after the Civil War. The book is structured around three-time frames; Slaverytime, Freddomtime, and Wartime.
Having grown up in the South and heard far too many stories about the Lost Cause, it was a joy to read a book narrated by two African-American women. The third leading character is the daughter o the owner of the plantation. At the end of the war, she was hidden away for six years and was unaware the South had surrendered.
Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, and richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love.
Since Jan died, I have read many books that I know she enjoyed. We both enjoyed Call the Midwife, and this book focused on birthing and mothering. Although conjuring was their medical care and not the type practiced in poplar by the Midwives, we would both have enjoyed the book.
Conjure Women also raises questions about the meaning of freedom. For example, Rue chooses not to leave the former plantation after the Klan attacks despite being free.
I recommend this book and look forward to reading more from Afia Atakora.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
