What We Lose
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Fourth Estate (UK)
 First edition (US) | |
| Author | Zinzi Clemmons |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Viking (US) Fourth Estate (UK) |
Publication date | July 11, 2017 |
| Pages | 277 |
| ISBN | 978-1-4328-4641-1 |
What We Lose is the 2017 debut novel of American author Zinzi Clemmons. It is loosely based on her own experiences caring for her mother who was dying of cancer.[1]
Clemmons was a graduate student in the fiction MFA program at Columbia University, working on a novel, when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She finished her degree but set aside the novel, instead writing journals of her experiences caring for and ultimately grieving her mother's death. These became the basis of a more experimental project than her unfinished linear novel, a fragmentary and chronologically disrupted "exercise in autofiction".[1]
Plot
Thandi, the daughter of a South African mother and an American father, comes of age in Pennsylvania. When she is in college, her mother is stricken by cancer and dies, causing Thandi's life to fall apart as she struggles to process her grief.
Shortly thereafter, Thandi discovers she is pregnant by her boyfriend Peter. She decides to carry the pregnancy to term and has a son she names Mahpee. She and Peter quickly marry and he moves to New York City to be with her and their child. However their marriage quickly falls apart and after she cheats on him, she decides to ask for a separation.
Thandi begins to forget her mother and slowly begins to heal, though she realizes her mother's death will haunt her for the rest of her life.