Gabby > Recent Status Updates

“the Chain will also consist of Links who have been reassigned or treated to the Chain”


also embarrassed to say that them being called Links just now clicked for me

as in Links….🔗in a Chain…. 🔗 ….

like i just thought oh cool interesting term for these people

“The Chain will also consist of Links who have been reassigned or traded…”


Something about the back of the book saying, “the program’s corporate owners stack the odds against her, will the price simply be too high?” And “so compelling right up to the final, fatal blow.”

plus the emphasis that same link can’t fight each other

makes me feel like it WILL be staxxx vs thruway somehow someway

“The Chain will also consist of Links who have been reassigned or traded to the Chain, as is sometimes deemed logistically or financially necessary and beneficial. The Cape program retains the upmost right to reassign any link, so long as the directors of the chains can reach in agreement.”


i assumed this was the case and this seems like ominous foreshadowing for staxxx and thurwar…

“‘Don’t be shy y’all. It’s been a long day.’

For the last couple of months this had been Staxxx’s procedure. The touch of another human was like love on the skin. Sunset had encouraged Staxxx when she made a tradition out of starting each March with some love.


this is so cute i knew i loved staxxx

main reason why i feel referring to this book as “americas new hunger games” or “sapphic hunger games” is tactless and distasteful

it’s real people and real issues, institutional black american issues

benefit of the doubt im gonna assume that poor taste tagline is to draw in ppl who wouldn’t otherwise read this to learn about tragedies of institutionalized racism and bigotry

calling it that AFTER..?

this was a thorough read

took me a year but im glad im done

not my usual style of book but it was worth it reading their stories

i have a crush on staxxx and it might be bc in my head i imagine her as testament from guilty gear strive but black and with longgg locs

like a scythe? that’s my favorite weaponnn

personality wise it seems like the character she’s playing in the death ring is kind of like aba from guilty gear which gives extra points for me probably

not that they’re super related books but after dnf-ing gideon the ninth i can confidently say this book gives me everything i was looking for in that book but better and written less annoyingly (sorry author)

violence and lesbians ,

bonus they are also black

woww this is funnn

oh wowww im glad i didn’t read this before reading the book i wouldn’t have wanted to know any of this, it was much more interesting to read it as it happened and be surprised

time to read the blurb

oh wait rereading the author description it makes a lot of sense that we ended the book with a girl whose family moved from ghana to hunstville alabama specifically

i knew the author was ghanaian but I forgot that she was also raised in hunstville

ok these sources of articles for her research for this book seem very interesting i will reference them later

thanks to my dad tho
im glad he let me visit nigeria at least once and that i have family from there that live here and that visit regularly

WHAT this is the last page?

this whole section has is so poetic and filled with dramatic irony

“He said something to Marjorie in Fante, and she swiped back in the halting, apologetic, Twi that she had been speaking all week.”

interesting so if you speak fante you can understand twi, i cant tell if id be able to understand yoruba if i were fluent in igbo but probably a little(?) im still studying (no thanks to my dad lol)


psa teach your kids their language so they don’t lose their culture

“How could he explain to Marjorie that he wasn’t supposed to be here? Alive. Free. That the fact that he had been born, that he wasn’t in a jail cell somewhere, was not by dint of his pulling himself up by the bootstraps, not by hard work or belief in the American dream, but by chance.”

“. . . of having been a part of some thing that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it – not apart from it, but inside of it.”


it and the consequences of it are everywhere

“You ever get back to Ghana?”
“Oh, I’ve been busy with grad, school and teaching, and all of that.”

it’s so easy to forget about your homeland especially when you’re forced to, im very grateful that i know at least half of mine since my dad came straight from naijaland but who knows where in africa my mom’s side came from

ive been anticipating that esi and effia’s lines would cross paths by the end of the book, but didn’t think it would be this soon


(mind you it’s not soon it *is* the end of the book)

“I’m Ki,” the dreadlocked woman said. “ And this is my friend. Marjorie.”

At the mention of her name, Marjorie lifted her head, the curtain of wild hair, parting to reveal a lovely face and a beautiful necklace.

“Nice to meet you, Marjorie,” Marcus said, extending his hand.


WHATTTTT



GREATEST CROSSOVER OF ALL TIME

“Originally, he wanted to focus on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great grandpa H’s life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. . . if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day he’d get so angry . . .”

“His father had a deep-seated hatred of white people. A hatred like a bag filled with stones, one stone for every year racial injustice continued to be the norm in America. He still carried the bag.”

Marjorie’s story was wonderful im glad she forgot about that stupid boy and that it was mainly focused on her relationship with herself, her grandmother and Ghana

The ending made me emotional

“Good idea, Graeme said, and Marjorie wondered if his father knew where he was.


I’m assuming this is going to end with him abandoning her because his parents don’t approve of a black girl

“Don’t mind them,” Marjorie‘s mother, Esther, said that night as she stroked Marjorie‘s hair.


love the subtle confirmation of what ended up happening btwn yaw and esther (even if it was obviously going to work out for them)

“It had belonged to Old Lady, and to Abena, before her, and to James, and Quey, and Effia the Beauty before that. . . Now it reflected the ocean water before them, gold waves shimmering in the black stone.”


im suddenly not remembering what happened to esi’s line’s black stone is it in america, or was it left buried in ghana after ness was shipped off to be enslaved

also im nostalgic for past characters

but also even if she was assuming based on my last name, if you go to Nigeria everyone here speaks English there anyway sooo now what


ignorance i assume

“Marjorie does not volunteer to answer questions. She really speaks. Does she know English? If she doesn’t, you should consider English as a Second Language classes.”


I remember randomly getting asked all the way in high school if English was my first language and i was confused bc no one had ever asked me that before

the staff who asked me had never heard me speak so i guess she assumed from my last name??