‘A long regard, a movement along the possibilities, and the stillness, at the heart of thinking. In these pages, we experience continuities but not endings, and every person is asked to face their present, and to see and feel and think without innocence. Ordinary Notes will forever alter each reader who grapples with its disquiet and its beauty.’ Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe’s extraordinary memoir, explores loss, pain, beauty, art, the public and private.
The author’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe, is at the heart of Ordinary Notes: ‘I learned to see in my mother’s house,’ writes Sharpe. ‘I learned how not to see in my mother’s house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.’ In a series of 248 notes, Christina Sharpe interweaves artifacts from the past with present-day realities and possible futures, constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence.
‘Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe is both formally daring and manages to be profoundly courageous in the tradition of Dionne Brand and Margo Jefferson.’ Guardian
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