Terminal Maladies

by Okwudili Nebeolisa

Winner of the 2023 CAAPP Book Prize from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press, Okwudili Nebeolisa’s debut poetry collection explores a son’s relationship with his mother through her battle with cancer and his move from his homeland of Nigeria to the United States.

Nebeolisa's poems highlight how the poet and his family shoulder the responsibility of caregiving together and how Nebeolisa works to bridge the physical, and at times, emotional, distance between them. He “I don’t understand / her smile or why she would be submerged / in pain and wouldn’t want to admit it. / Who did this to our mothers?” The book questions his Nigerian mother’s need to act brave and a son’s need to protect.

Terminal Maladies reminds us that grief is inevitable, yet unique to each of us, and serves as a tribute to Nebeolisa’s mother and is a necessary read for anyone who has faced the challenges of caring for a loved one.

Genres: Poetry

70 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2024

Reviews

[Sandra Del Rio · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tell her you remember how she mashed fried rice/with her fingers before putting it/in your mouth even though you don't remember"

The poems of Terminal Maladies completely sucked me in and made me sink inside myself. I was so moved by the deep care and love with which each poem was written. Each line immaculate, it's hard to select a single one to highlight, but the above quote is from the poem "Memo," which made me pause and reread again, and again. The book, constructed by poems that were each extremely provocative and gorgeous, explores themes of grief, transnationality, family, and more. Please read!

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It was easier// to imagine the bad news than to hear it/ from the mouth of someone I knew." This heartbreaking collection describes the mother's illness that the poet, unable to travel back home due to emigration, struggles to understand and process from afar. Nebeolisa is painfully honest about survivor's guilt and the limits of our compassion even if love may seem unlimited. A mature and deeply human book I read in one sitting.

[Mya Matteo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“all of us unable to sleep / the house a mango savagely eaten to its kernel.”

//

An outstanding portrait of both pre-grief and grief of a loved one.

CW: pre-grief / grief of a mother from cancer

[l · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And when I finally told her about the project, I was surprised to hear something like defeat in her voice as she asked if there was anything else I wanted to know about her suffering."

"I once asked her if she cared that God was not answering but she replied, Even no is an answer."

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing poems about loss, but their power is in their restraint.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems move like spring morning rains - with a gentle spare steadiness that made me ache all over.