Notes on Grief
From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post).
Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure.
Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria.
In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.
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Community Reviews
"For the rest of my life, I will live with my arms outstretched for things that are no longer there."
What an incredibly beautiful tribute to the author's late father. She has captured so much about his wide and warm character in this teeny-tiny book. I am struck by passages like the one above and stories of the kind of big personality her father had, as well as the powerful love he gave to his family - something that leaves a huge gap in their lives when he is gone. She talks about his laugh, the honest and unabashed way he acted as her best critic and proudest cheerleader, and the strength that he showed through the hardest times (like when he was...kidnapped?! Say what?!). He sounds like an amazing person and you can just feel her love for him come through in this book.
What an incredibly beautiful tribute to the author's late father. She has captured so much about his wide and warm character in this teeny-tiny book. I am struck by passages like the one above and stories of the kind of big personality her father had, as well as the powerful love he gave to his family - something that leaves a huge gap in their lives when he is gone. She talks about his laugh, the honest and unabashed way he acted as her best critic and proudest cheerleader, and the strength that he showed through the hardest times (like when he was...kidnapped?! Say what?!). He sounds like an amazing person and you can just feel her love for him come through in this book.
I just finished listening to Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It is a beautiful tribute to her father and a raw, heartbreaking account of what it is like to lose someone you love. Yet it was what I needed to hear to validate how I feel still about those I’ve lost over the past few years. It is published in The New Yorker (https://newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-grief), but I recommend listening to her recording.
Next week, Feb. 1, will mark the 2nd anniversary of my Nana’s death. I still find myself feeling guilty for missing her so deeply because at 94, she lived a rich life, and I had the blessing of having her in my life for 47 years. However, Adichie’s words meant the world to me in validating my feelings about missing her so deeply, “age is irrelevant in grief; at issue is not how old he was but how loved.” Later she says, “a friend sends me a line from a novel I wrote: ‘Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.’ How odd to find it so exquisitely painful to read my own words.” The feeling of grief does not always feel lucky, but boy am I glad to have had the opportunity to have loved and been loved by those who have left this world and me in to remember life before with them and the life after without them.
Next week, Feb. 1, will mark the 2nd anniversary of my Nana’s death. I still find myself feeling guilty for missing her so deeply because at 94, she lived a rich life, and I had the blessing of having her in my life for 47 years. However, Adichie’s words meant the world to me in validating my feelings about missing her so deeply, “age is irrelevant in grief; at issue is not how old he was but how loved.” Later she says, “a friend sends me a line from a novel I wrote: ‘Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.’ How odd to find it so exquisitely painful to read my own words.” The feeling of grief does not always feel lucky, but boy am I glad to have had the opportunity to have loved and been loved by those who have left this world and me in to remember life before with them and the life after without them.
I am such a fan of this author as their voice carries so well in their writing. In a poignant piece about the grief and mourning of her father, we follow the author in their cultural traditions and family honoring the passing of a cherished family member. From her memories to the celebration of the life of her Nigerian father endured for a better life. A short but impactful read and beautiful way to immortalize his life.