Aurelia Palmer’s Reviews > The Death of Vivek Oji > Status Update

What do men really want? 😭 They complain women are lazy, but when a woman becomes independent, suddenly she’s “trying to be a man.” 🤦🏻‍♀️

This passage genuinely irritated me because the problem clearly isn’t her competence. It’s that her competence threatens the expected power dynamic.

Page 112 and I—WHAT?! 😭

I knew Osita and Vivek were cousins, but this just made me look at their relationship completely differently.

I need to keep reading because I refuse to make assumptions. 🤨

If nobody sees you, are you still there?”

I had to sit with this one.

This part made me pause.

Chika is remembering things he noticed about Vivek as a child, and now he’s wondering whether he should have said something. That last line made me uneasy.

This made me pause.

Vivek was born into grief, and somehow the language makes it feel as though that grief became part of his existence from the very beginning.

I don’t know what to make of that yet.

This line made me pause.

A hopeful moment between two newlyweds suddenly carried so much weight because the narrator let me know something they didn’t.

I don’t know what happened yet, but now I need to know why there would only be one child.

I have more questions than answers right now, and I think that’s exactly how the author wants it.

Who was Vivek Oji? Why was the market burned on the day he died?

I’m intrigued.