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A review by blessing_aj
I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History by Emmanuel Iduma
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.5
In I’m Still With You, Emmanuel Iduma sets out on a mission to unearth the mysteries surrounding the life and times of his uncle and namesake who died during the Biafran War, reportedly. The timeline of his research, begins in 2020, at the peak of the END SARS protests and somewhere along the line, his research also coincides with the Nigerian government’s attempts to clamp down on the IPOB movement in the south eastern parts of the country.
Just as the title on the U.S. publication says, this memoir is a reckoning with silence, inheritance and history and it spoke to me on so many levels. The first being that like the author, I am part of the generation that did not witness the war, but has inherited this uncomfortable silence and general vagueness as a default response to any question regarding that period and is therefore always willing to learn what I can from any available,credible source - Of which this particular book has become one. The second has to do with interpersonal relationships in the family and how that impacts our lives in ways beyond our understanding.
I genuinely loved every passage where he spoke of the tender loving friendship and companionship of his wife, not just because she’s one of my favorite authors in the world but you can almost feel the reciprocity of his affection and just how much he has been blessed by it.
I love that there are so many theories about the inspiration for the title that can be inferred from the contents of this memoir, and that he does steer the reader’s mind towards one, but I also think that it’s beautiful that the title appears to be in conversation with the title of his wife’s debut novel. A conversation as heartwarmingly reassuring as the love they both share.
Just as the title on the U.S. publication says, this memoir is a reckoning with silence, inheritance and history and it spoke to me on so many levels. The first being that like the author, I am part of the generation that did not witness the war, but has inherited this uncomfortable silence and general vagueness as a default response to any question regarding that period and is therefore always willing to learn what I can from any available,credible source - Of which this particular book has become one. The second has to do with interpersonal relationships in the family and how that impacts our lives in ways beyond our understanding.
I genuinely loved every passage where he spoke of the tender loving friendship and companionship of his wife, not just because she’s one of my favorite authors in the world but you can almost feel the reciprocity of his affection and just how much he has been blessed by it.
I love that there are so many theories about the inspiration for the title that can be inferred from the contents of this memoir, and that he does steer the reader’s mind towards one, but I also think that it’s beautiful that the title appears to be in conversation with the title of his wife’s debut novel. A conversation as heartwarmingly reassuring as the love they both share.