Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir

by Walela Nehanda

A searing debut YA poetry and essay collection about a Black cancer patient who faces medical racism after being diagnosed with leukemia in their early twenties, for fans of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and Laurie Halse Anderson's Shout .

When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don’t use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online.

But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela's diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression intersect: Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.

In Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir , the author details a galvanizing account of their survival despite the U.S. medical system, and of the struggle to face death unafraid.

Genres: Memoir, Poetry, Nonfiction, Disability, Queer, LGBT, Audiobook

400 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 2024

About the author

Walela Nehanda is a nonbinary cultural worker, stem cell transplant and cancer survivor, and mental health advocate born and based in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

[Jesse On Youtube · Rating 5 out of 5]

Add this book to cart. Don't argue.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yall!!!!

This book is a masterpiece. Yall know I don't love Poetry, it's just not for me but this memoir!!! THIS MEMOIR!!!

I'm madly in love with this book and with Walela. Bless the Blood is Walela Nehanda a Black, nonbinary, fat person's memoir of their battle with leukemia and the generational trauma that Black people have to deal with when it comes to Healthcare.

I don't even know how to review this book. Just go out in pick this book up. It's both sad and hopeful. This is definitely on my favorite books of the year list.

A Must Read!

[Lisa Marie Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is sincerely one of the best books I’ve ever read. Powerful, honest, lyrical, imaginative, raw. I started reading it this morning and couldn’t put it down until I was finished. A must read, not only for those of us who are sick and disabled but for anyone else who wants to better understand the intersections of race, gender, trauma, and the medical industrial complex. I learned so much today because Walela allowed me to bear witness to their pain. I feel grateful that I got to experience reading this book. That’s not something I think very often when turning the last page.

[Ann Herrold · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, I may never stop singing the praises of this memoir. I couldn't put it down. Poetry here manages to tell an incredibly effective story, getting into the cracks that prose would gloss over.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're going to read this, CHOOSE THE AUDIO! So,so good! Real review to come to my blog!

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this on audio and it was absolutely incredible!

I am a bit confused by the marketing/summary of this filing it as YA. While I definitely think this is accessible for that age range, I would hate for it to be missed by adults who wouldn’t think to pick up something marked as YA. This book is just too good to not be read by as many people as possible.

[Natalie ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4⭐️
Rep: nonbinary black MC, anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, cancer
Check TWs for this one!
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Penguin Teen for this ARC! Overall, this was a beautiful debut poetry book highlighting important topics, from disability, race, mental health, sexuality, gender identity, suicide, and abuse. This book follows our narrator and MCs journey as a black non-binary young adult dealing with a cancer diagnosis and treatment. Bless the Blood was a unique read that provided essential and valuable viewpoints on various issues, and overall I think it was done well. I’m glad to have read this!

[vicky. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Bless the blood.
Bless these droopy, fatigued eyes and stiff muscles. Bless the sapphire bruises and night sweats shivering.
Bless the IV track marks and these shrunken veins.
Bless this big ole restless heart.
Bless the dreams my body can no longer afford the rent for.
Bless this in-between brief bliss.
Bless the love I am trying to make room for.
Bless the cancer.
God. Bless the Leukemia
I am still trying to understand.”

Fantástica autobiografía sobre cómo es vivir con cancer cuando apenas estás empezando tu adultez, cuando tienes toda tu vida por delante, cuando encima tienes que enfrentarte al racismo, transfobia y negligencia médica, cuando intentas sobrevivir a pesar del sistema médico, cuando también tienes complicaciones con tu relación, con tu familia y contigo.

Honesto, poderoso, poético, crudo.

rep: leucemia, ansiedad, depresión, adhd, ptsd.

[Leia Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, damn. As the author states from the beginning, this is full of trauma triggers, but it’s also an unflinching perspective on family, abuse, human frailty, and identity. Like drinking from a fire hydrant.

[Christine Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an early copy of this book thanks to Penguin Teen. There are always formatting issues with ebooks that will never come off well for poetry. Definitely try to pick up or preorder a physical copy of this book to get the full experience!

This poignant autobiography is one told from the deepest of hearts. A story about Walela who is black, queer, and disabled. This is their journey finding out their cancer diagnosis and all of the hardships life has handed to them. This is told in long form poetry, which is my favorite.

Sometimes the flow of the book felt quite stunted. The back and forth between past and present felt confusing at times but once oriented you catch on quick. I just wish we had gotten more of an intro to Ivie. All we were given was the word “fiancée” and nothing else. Just some background on her character or description would’ve been nice instead of me imaging them as some spector following Walela around.

Also just a trigger warning there are some graphic cutting scenes to be aware of! I know that gets to a lot of people especially if caught off guard. Same with ED and transphobia as our main character is non-binary!

This story is one told from pain and heartache. It’s for those who see what is wrong with the world but can do nothing about it. It’s the cards that they’ve been dealt and Walela shows how they made it through.

There’s so many amazing quotes from this book I wish I could share a with you but please know they may not appear in the final edition nor in the same capacity as they are now. I still wish to appreciate at least one.

“We both practice a religion that knows no bounds to this life, meaning our love knows no limits here.” -Not an “official” quote but a dang good one that will stay with me (if someone confirms it in the published, I will edit!)

[rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have too many feelings about this book to share in a way that feels complete. grateful to the author for mustering the strength to share this intimate journey.

i specifically requested that my library acquire this audiobook and i was overjoyed to see “3 people are waiting” when i went to return it. i hope my subsequent fellow readers, no matter how deep their well of compassion is, find that they can reach even deeper.

if you can, please register to be a bone marrow donor <3

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I feel so wrong in some ways writing a review for a book like this. Nehanda clearly put their heart and soul into this and crafted it in order to tell their story, abound with trauma and pain.

With that said, as a whole this felt disjointed to me, and not in a way that felt intentional. It very well may have been and I missed it, but I wish this had a better editor, if only to help with the placement of some of these pieces.

I also did not vibe with how many statements they seemed to make about existence in general, which may be the fault of the form, but some of it felt less like memoir and more like pushing a version of reality on the reader. I am not sure how else to explain it, but this feeling came up too often for me to be comfortable with. Again though, I think this may just be the fault of the form.

Overall, I would recommend, but keep in mind that this is pretty heavy. It also did not feel super YA to me, but I have not read very many YA memoirs specifically.

[Kia Sconiers · Rating 5 out of 5]

easily one of my favorite books. I teared up at certain points and just loved it so much that I bought a physical copy. (The audiobook is so great and potent and passionate and well produced!) It’s queer and black and everything I needed to hear.

[Emmaby Barton Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

“i do actually smoke down the cigarette augustus waters puts between his teeth… this is not a romanticization of tragedy… notice black people do not exist in these worlds, but cancer exists in mine and theirs… i plan to fail any expectation you have of me. there’s no prophetic wisdom to sip in doses of stanzas like a prescription. i am not an inspiration. i am not the undesirable, ugly ghoul that society portrays the sick and black and disabled to be. welcome to my lecture on medical racism. i’m not here to make survival comfortable. i am indeed the bad cancer patient.”

one of my favourite things about book clubs is how many books i find and love that i’d never have picked up otherwise. absolutely adored this one - such an incredible and moving read, i was annotating pretty much every page. i’ve never had cancer and i am white, but i have other chronic health issues, mental illnesses, and complex family relationships that mean i can relate to a lot of what walela writes about. while also learning a lot about the intersections of being sick/involved in the medical system while also black, queer, poor etc. also liked how the poems are chronological/tell a story

favourite poems:
- writer’s note: this here ain’t a john green novel
- the first set of seven days
- we can’t buy a cure, but we can sure try
- luck be a roll-a-dice when you a nigga
- i go searching for my mother in the wrong people
- nonbinary as in
- disordered eating overstays its welcome
- death interrupts the shred of normalcy i’m finding and announces: everyone black with cancer keeps dying
- cancer and the illusion of choice
- running on e
- ambivalence toward sex
- my therapist asks me to describe my self-blame
- 25 things i’ve learned before turning 25
- american horror story: racist hospital edition
- medical apartheid: a white boy says, “saw you post some heavy shit, hope you’re doing okay”
- i don’t need my mother before she needs me anymore
- i met my psychiatrist for the first time and the color theory behind red forms
- change = grief + acceptance
- i… think i wanna look into doing a stem cell transplant?
- mass death and productivity
- shaving my head in my first-ever apartment, july 2020
- irony makes one last joke - i promise it’s the last one
- future me meets my younger self before the cancer

intersectionality
- relationship between race/blackness and cancer/experiencing the medical system: how there is little representation of black people with cancer, the reasons why poc may reject/not trust the medical system/western medicine, the awful history of black people being used to advance western medicine. my experiences with the medical system and my privilege in being white.
- “health is wealth… meaning white and rich”
- “no Black cancer patients to look up to…. We don’t got stories. Nothing that can be passed down. If I’m my big ole age and can’t listen to anyone who has fictionally survived cancer or find Black people who haven’t died from cancer, then what does that say about our odds in reality?”
- “Western medicine claims there ain’t nothing out there meant to save us negroes. We go to a shop like the one I work at and attempt to attribute our health to a personal failing. Because. If we failed, then we can fix ourselves. We refute our bodies not being to “standard.” I am no different than my customers, I am no naturopath, but experimentation is easier on the psyche than a white-collar doctor who is more invested in debating my Black bleak reality than being… Reliance, then, is no longer within the system but with ourselves inside this tiny crowded store.”
- “He did not have the luxury of being sick and worthy. History proving those two will never exist at the same time for Black folk.”
- “What kind of god needs my knees broken to show respect?”
- “It’s like if I ain’t worth being abused by capitalism, I become yet another sad “tragedy.”
- “neutrality is not peaceful”
- “ I am still trying to find the word that is me yet there is no word that is me English, a colonial language, a stern muscle keeping my words in check”
- “Sickness is beautiful until it’s identified. Someone on Instagram said I was as big as a house, therefore I cannot have cancer. I taste my destroyed self-esteem and chew on my tongue for the entirety of a four-day water cleanse. Now when I remember that message, it’s done in my own voice. Or I believe it to be my own thought: I’m fat. I’m fat and disabled. I’m fat and disabled and trans and queer and Black. And no part of me is considered “enough” and all parts of me are revolting.”
- “The world does not want to acknowledge cancer as a disability. The world calls it an insult to his memory. Disabled is considered a slur. As if the truth is too inconvenient: A superhero can be ill. A superhero can die. A superhero can be more than a superhero: but a person, a Black disabled person… How meaningless we are if we aren’t making meaning out of our cancer. If we aren’t superheroes. If we don’t suffer in silence too. Like admitting the disease as truth out loud makes us weak. So Chadwick Boseman’s death becomes less of a memoriam to who he was and more of an ode to productivity. An ode to how much we can give on empty. And a disabled person’s death becomes a talking point to delegitimize other people like him. Because a king could never have cancer. A successful person could never have cancer. How dare we say such a thing.”
- “So much of cancer is trying to find the meaning of life. Those pursuits are for people who can afford to travel and check off bucket lists and have doctors who care if they have low morale. The meaning of my life,”
- “in a medical system that is not compliant to preserving life, so really I’m just helping them do their job, which is:rationing my care [or] speeding up the inevitable:”
- this whole poem: “Medical Apartheid: A white boy says, “Saw you post some heavy shit, hope you’re doing okay”: “It’s believing we don’t feel pain. Because they so used to us being dead that when we alive, they don’t even see us as such. We are not human. At times, I question if I want to be human by this country’s standards.”
- “You are a spectator, our life a battle royale. Holding us in your phone like a snow globe. Too enchanted with our culture to realize there are cremated ashes fallin’ out the bottom.”
- “Rage is a deep well that gives way to a prison of mourning.”
- “It’s cultural for us, and I get it: We want to solve these things ourselves if that means less contact with the system. Therapy and psychiatry are “white people shit,” and it is “white people shit” because therapists and psychiatrists are more accessible for white people to utilize. ”
- “People will do anything to make themselves unacquainted with fear—even it means devaluation of a stranger minding their damn business.”
- “It costs money to have empathy, to need sleep, but Productivity needs us half-awake, army-crawling toward a dollar bill. Mass Death is desensitizing everybody, and Productivity thrives on the apathy and individualism and hustle/grind culture. Productivity needs us to not care about one another because then we don’t need one another. Instead, we need it. It. As in productivity. We need money. We need to get it on our own. There is a way of doing this better.”

complex families, trauma, and mental illness
- the way staff can’t fathom i don’t want parents knowing. how i can’t fathom how easily so many other patients reach out to their family for support and comfort. families visiting every day. me and mum sitting in silence. not visiting at all.
- the guilt and confusion of how you are treated as a child versus a health versus sick adult
- “A touch-deprived past will create an overcompensating adult. But in the hospital, I do not have to be hypervigilant for once. For the first time since elementary school, my mother sits in bed with me. Hugs me and pecks a kiss on the top of my forehead. Steely facades rust into history when her finger traces my face… In the hospital and when I may be dying, my mother feels like . . . a mother. Ensures I am receiving the best care possible.”
- “I know I am not their family in the same way everyone else is in the room to one another. Loyal to one another no matter who is wrong or right: family is blood, and blood comes above all else. I want to mean that to somebody,”
- “I Go Searching for My Mother in the Wrong People. I am looking for anyone to claim me as their child at the lost and found… “The sun creeps over the horizon, and I cannot stop compulsively searching for a mother. Words always sound better on paper or in passing. However, Action deems who and what is worth the time. Return me back to the lost and found of hypervigilance. Ivie’s mom already missed the memo: false promises come back around —I’m waiting to get picked up elsewhere.”
- “It hurts to stay. I imagine it hurts to die too. My tears tired of crying. How am I supposed to practice gratefulness while swallowed in this deep hurt?”

the pressure to be a good patient and the realities of being sick
- to not make things harder for everyone else. how you have to present yourself to get respect and be cared for. you have to advocate for these things but you will also be resented for doing so. how cancer doesn’t automatically erase all your other issues/doesn’t give you some magic cure perspective/make you an angel. you still do stupid and selfish things, you still struggle with your mental health issues etc. people with illnesses are not perfect. their other problems do not immediately disappear. love that it’s not like all the other issues go away bc cancer comes into the picture. the messiness we don’t normally see represented. usually if people have other issues it’s like they get cancer and omg perspective
- fucked up but knowing even the most sympathetic illnesses have loved ones + health professionals getting annoyed, invalidating, dismissing them etc
- “the hospital, its smell, it follows you everywhere”
- “The novelty of cancer is wearing off & if anything, it is proving to be annoying for everyone.”
- “Don’t forget to be nice. Quiet mouths don’t get fed, but knowing your rights will get you dead. Mama taught you that one.”
- “Know your illness better than any patient your nurses and doctors encounter. Be careful, though, it makes you unlikeable. Makes you uppity. Like you are aware you deserve better treatment than what they are giving.”
- “most people have compassion fatigue and are over it, and I understand why. “Cancer is a daunting experience for everyone involved. If I had the option to simply move on from it, I would try to as well. Cancer has put my life on pause, and I am empathetic to those around me who want the option to move forward: whether that means going out without me or planning for and working toward a future that they know is more guaranteed than my own. And of course, who am I to make everyone around me experience the same isolation and stagnancy as myself? That’s a recipe for other people’s unhappiness and resentment, and I don’t believe in demanding my loved ones to be as unfulfilled as I am. So of course, when my partner wants to go to a rave at eleven p.m., I’m going to say yes, because who am I to deny what seems like a cool-ass experience AND I’m going to be asleep anyway, so who cares? Each time, I smile and encourage all my loved ones to do what their hearts desire, what makes them happy, and usually that’s rooted in a sense of belonging around other people—and of course, I genuinely want that for them. But when the phone call ends, or they leave my house, or when I go on social media and see moments of joy I wish I could insert myself in—I cannot help but feel jealous. And so I lie in bed and say terrible things about my body, this illness, and I am embarrassed by the lonely.”
- “when it comes to this type of self-harm. Yeah, go on and judge: I am not a compliant patient”
- “the nurses roll their eyes inconvenienced by us knowing patient rights or things only the doctors should know . . .”

healing and growth
- so beautiful seeing their growth throughout the book <33 especially the journey of fighting for themself, feeling inherently deserving, don’t need others to be loved etc
- “Am I even halfway decent enough to be someone worth finding?”
- “It is lonely to know nobody holds me like I hold myself. To know it is but my breath that morning depends on. And that’s when Doubt is given my reflection. A new name. And this is when I’m most honest. Therefore, most vulnerable. This is the part I hate. That I let nobody see. The part where I question everyone who has passed on or those who have “passed me by in this life: “But why didn’t you stay?”
- “Believe me, I am trying to not go back there.”
- “I want to be good by my own standard, in my own time. I want to be great, I want to be good, and I want to fail. Perhaps if I’m wishing real hard, I want to be half of the sunbeam Whitney was. I want to evoke the type of emotion with the sound of my voice that makes you jump into the human form of yourself and say, “Gah damn, ain’t it wild to be alive? Ain’t it wild to have all these emotions and actually feel them!?” I want to know about love. Like how bell hooks writes about it. I know love is far more vast than what a romantic partner can give me. I want to love people, and I want people to experience my love. I want to understand love in all its forms; I want to stop begging for love, for the bare minimum; I want to stop being afraid of giving love. I want to give to others a fraction of what her music and films, like The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale, and The Preacher’s Wife, gave to me.”
- “No . . . well, thank you for protecting me, but I need to let you go to move on…. “Where is the limit for this kind of self-abuse?” “When do you stop torturing yourself?” “Are you ready to move on?” “What would it look like to not have the stones anymore?” “Relief, then an overwhelming sadness, then rage because I will have arrows drawn with pinpoints for exact landing.”
- “Self-care, for me, requires discipline. I must understand why it’s so hard for me to place myself first.”
- “I wish younger me knew someone like older me back then.”
- this whole poem: “I Don’t Need My Mother Before She Needs Me Anymore”
- “The next few days, I do my mother’s job—crawl up the asses of everyone around me who wants to deny me care. I take notes when the doctors come in, ask the same questions she would, and for printouts of my labs. I remind my nurses of what they need to do, get up and walk around my room each day, ask for my gown and bedding to be changed, wash myself, eat my food, comb my hair, brush my teeth. I parent myself, meaning I love myself in the way I deserve to.”
- “diagnosis provides relief. I’m not meant to live like this; there is something better… “the pills aren’t the cure; they are the aids, a symbol of my willingness to try everything I can to just stay: here.”
- “traditions i created in solitude, i allow others to see” - that tiktok i saw the other day where the creator was like ‘i missed someone who baked so i started baking’. create your own traditions. do things alone. but also it’s not the same. sometimes you’re just lonely.
- “It’s important to identify that change is needed, change is necessary, then ask: Do we want to commit to doing the work in order to change ourselves, to brave the unknown within ourselves? My therapist then makes a point. “Most people think change is to accept things that are transforming, but in actuality, change is to accept reality as is.” He then pulls out his pad again and writes: Change = Grief + Acceptance. And that’s when my therapist writes out the acronym for Mourn The Person We Could’ve Been.”
- “So what if I don’t want to wait for things to get really bad when they already started off really bad. Heard that only 23 percent of Black patients find matches who can donate that new immune system, that second ticket at life…. More than anything, I want to be responsible to myself…. I want to think I can do it. I want to believe I deserve more than waiting.”
- “I’m gonna follow through with this transplant. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be worthwhile.” Freeing one hand, I twirl pasta around my fork, not waiting for anyone’s response to validate my self-preservation.”
- “For the first time in my life, I could see my face and all it held in my reflection and I didn’t care to answer to anyone but myself. Everything could wait. I will stand naked, humid, with steam rising and falling in this small dilapidated bathroom for a minute. Trace the shape of my face and body. What a brilliant vessel we are through everything that is tempestuous”

[Cassandra Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bless the Blood is a cancer memoir written by a non binary person about their struggles after being diagnosed with leukemia. It covers heavy topics as cancer treatments, neglect, abuse, they get called by their dead name frequently, systemic medical racism. It is told via poems. This one took a bit longer to read than normal but it really helped me to grasp some of the things they went through. I definitely recommend reading this if not triggered by the things I mentioned

[Andrea Beatriz Arango]

Took my time with this one and I cannot tell you how many lines I highlighted (check out my instagram for some of my favorites). Walela isn't just good, they're great.

Buy BLESS THE BLOOD or request it from your library, folks 😩. I mean it.

[Madison Akers · Rating 3 out of 5]

You guys, I could not finish this. It was so powerfully raw and heartbreaking, I couldn’t handle the weight of it all. Wales is so insightful and feels so deeply about the weight of the world around her.

[seasalted.citrus (Topaz, Oliver) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I tell you this book left me BREATHLESS!!😭💕💕Unfortunately I didn’t finish this in time for Trans Rights Readathon, but THIS. This is what novels in-verse are made to be like. I’ve never read a memoir in verse before, but I am so thankful I did because it added a much-needed layer of creativity and emotion to the format.

Besides being about cancer, Nehanda uses vivid, raw poetry to tell all of the other parts that come with it: The threat of their mortality, how living with chronic illness has affected their relationships with others(for better and for worse), dealing with how the intersections of their identity—being Black, fat, disabled and queer—make them even more vulnerable within the American healthcare system and shape their experience. (The author left a “further reading” list at the end, so I’ll definitely be checking the titles out.) It also shows relationships they have with their family and generational history, from the complicated one with their parents(and how, to an extent, dealing with that abuse shaped their relationship with Ivie), to Nehanda connecting with their ancestors as part of their healing(which I thought was especially interesting!). And this was surprisingly introspective, for a debut from a young author?? (Walela Nehanda is in their late twenties, I think?)

Although others might find it a little disjointing, I also loved the switch between the free verse, and the bouts of poetic novel writing! The author’s craftsmanship really shines through that, imo.

“Bless The Blood” is definitely a heavy read. But I won’t be forgetting a narrative voice such as this one. I can’t recommend this enough, and I am eager to see what else Walela Nehanda will write.

A few quotes I liked(and would have snapped my fingers in response—in place of clapping—if I had heard them said as slam poetry):
• “Pierce through his classism,
‘these poor people need help,’
reminding him:
a doctor not in service
to the people
is in service to his ego,
the morgue,
and a checkbook.”

• “It’s all about acknowledging the irony that in some ways,
my cancer saved me, because did you know it is actually really so fucking terrifying being invested in living?”

• “-see how even in death, you can't acknowledge a young
Black person is gone and your white ass can't respect us,
But go ahead, turn up your -I mean our-music.
Sit at your nice dining table in a condo in a Gotham-Lookin' city and bop yo head to it. Forgettin' how history repeats itself. You are a spectator, our life a battle royale.
Holding us in your phone like a snow globe.
Too enchanted with our culture to realize there are cremated ashes fallin' out the bottom.”

• “Maybe, if the cancer leaves,
maybe that apathetic side of my lover will rip itself
out and walk out the hospital with the leukemia.
I did agree to forever. I did promise my best.
In sickness and in health. Lover, you haven’t met me in health.”

[SamSamSam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that I've finished the book, I wish I had listened to the audio version per other reviewers' recommendations. I love the idea of books in verse and I've enjoyed many of them, but as a reader I often feel like there's deeper meaning going over my head. That's a me problem, I could definitely get better at reading books in verse. Either way, I appreciated that while this was a memoir about cancer, so much of the content was about the author's interpersonal relationships and how they were impacted by living with cancer, rather than being solely focused on the medical experience. This story also helps fill the gap in the literature that Machado addresses in In the Dream House with its focus on queer domestic abuse, which is so important. This memoir is beloved for a reason, and I'll absolutely recommend!

[blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is going to live on my bookshelf sandwiched between Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House. Interweaving poetry, memoir, and manifesto, Walela Nahanda masterfully flays open their own history of illness and heartbreak with no holds barred. The writing is beautiful and affecting without shying away from the horrors they’ve faced in terms of medical racism, transphobia, interpersonal abuse, and familial ostracization. This is an unapologetic account of the human condition that is often otherwise hidden behind inspiration-porn or outright ignorance, cementing its importance as a must-read.

———————————————————————————

“I don’t find freedom anywhere, mostly conjectures. Violence cycles as it reinvents itself, coinciding with the ways slavery has reinvented itself and scarring so much that the root is obstructed from sight.”

“Instagram got influencers for makeup but no Black cancer patients to look up to. We don’t show up in TV, movies, on YouTube, or hosting podcasts. We don’t got stories, nothing that can be passed down. If I my big old age and can’t listen to anyone who has fictionally survived cancer, or find Black people who haven’t died from cancer, then what does that say about our odds in reality? How is there no documentation of this? What did we do that was so wrong for society to be our dismayed mother, letting us go this long unaccounted for?”

“To be Black is to be a non-thing, a nothing. Not human. Barely animal. They will accuse you of letting an angel draw its long fingernail against your neck to drain your mortality and morality. Bad ideas, like Black people and cancer, are not meant to co-exist. Must be cut out. Taken into the woods and put down. Removed as a smudge on the windows of humanity, or experimented on as an idea that gives way to an idea that gives way to an idea, and so on. Answer: the Black cancer patient is a mythical fascination, a playground for the authors and readers perception, only as real and tangible as our will allows them to be.”

“Imma probably smoke the whole carton, cus I can’t predict anything I’m gunna do when it comes to this type of self-harm. Yeah, go on and judge. I am not a compliant patient in a medical system that is not compliant to preserving life. So really, I’m just helping them do their job which is rationing my care or speeding up the inevitable.”

“Hope is bleak when loss enters when we are so young.”

[Olivia D · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars
I really enjoyed this memoir! It was definitely a different set up compared to most memoirs with the added poems, essays, etc. Walela Nehanda inspires me to write about my experience in the medical field as a queer and plus sized woman. Parts of the book confused me or parts seemed unnecessary for what I thought the goal of the book was to be. I learned so much and I was so moved by the poetry especially. Parts of the poems I would have liked to be an essay because I wanted to know more! Overall a book that I believe everyone should read to help educate themselves on how real medical racism really is.

[Giovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally I’m not into cancer memoirs, but this one attracted me for a lot of reasons.
1) told the story of a black, non binary poet in the american system
2) written in poetic prose and poems
3) the biggest reason, she reached out to her ancestors for healing
This was a hard read, but the poetic prose and poems created a distance so you didn’t really sink into her pain. She had everything going against her, and then the pandemic on top of it, but she got through. But it’s not told as a redemption story, which I appreciated.
Anyway, interesting book. Read not listened to.

[Kayleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm mad at myself for letting this sit on my shelf for so long.

Bless the Blood is a poetic memoir of a black cancer patient going through treatment. Told in a variety of styles, it showcases their diagnoses, treatment, evolution, family and friend dynamics throughout their experience with cancer, etc. While there are trigger warnings at the beginning and they're all there, I think they are all necessary for the authenticity of their story.

Read it; and don't wait like I did.

[Jay Bakman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author was right. This is NOT a Nicholas Sparks book. This is not a romanticized version of having cancer. This is not a story where they run off into the sunset and fall in love. This is a story about a girl who is diagnosed with leukemia. Read the book!!

[Laquisa Sprewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best things I've ever read and I'm so grateful I did. As a Black, chronically ill person, this is one of the most important books I've ever read and I can tell that's only going to become more and more true over time. Feeling blessed to have read Bless the Blood.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It will be a top read of 2024 for me. It's a memoir written in verse and if you are a fan of Elizabeth Acevedo, I think you would love Walela Nehanda.

Walela is a fat Black queer non-binary person and they have dealt with family trauma, racism, distorted eating, navigating gender, queerness, fatphobia, mental health, and medical trauma. Walela is raw and takes the readers with them as they navigated various points in their life that culminated in a diagnosis of leukemia at 23. We learn about how each part of Walela's identities intersected with the diagnosis and how it impacted them as they had to learn to navigate a medical system that is not build for fat Black queer non-binary people.

Walela also discusses how isolating it can be to deal with a chronic illness and be disabled in society.
I had to just sit at times with the way that this book moved me. I will leave you with this quote from the book:

"my cancer saved me, because did you know it is actually really so fucking terrifying being invested in living?"

[Michelle Olavarrieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this in one day. I could not put it down. Best book of 2024 so far. Order it ASAP.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did, wanted to like their approach attacking a cancer journey through poems, but at least for me, it was too disjointed in the end. While some of that reflects the reality (surrealness) of the experience this book could maybe have used a better editor. I say this as a 10 year survivor who is still trying to sort through the experience and fallout.

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

a solid collection of poems and short essays. i really enjoyed Walela’s narration, i always love hearing poetry read out loud by the author. (but I didn’t love the sound effects, which were not consistent enough to be expected)
I don’t understand why this was labeled as YA tho

[Polly Perks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all of this resonated with me the way it will likely resonate for other people. But the parts that did were very strong.