The Girl Who Cried Poetry

After escaping reality, another reason I love to read is because I love words. In 2023, I read books that made me stop to look at one beautiful line that made my heart do somersaults and I highlighted it, because why would I allow such poetry to go away like that without giving it its due? Can never be me.

But there was one book in particular that took the cake.

We talk about how books can change our lives, but to what extent can they be the centre of your hyperfixation, the reason for your existential crisis and the moment you decide to change your life?

I introduce you to Vagabonds by Eloghosa Osunde.

Synopsis

In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters—some haunted, some defiant—navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives.

As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde’s brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city’s dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde’s characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.

Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.

The first time I opened this book to read was in 2022. The hype had gotten to me and I could not just not read it. I read the first page, and there was something so “weird” about it. I thought, Is this the same book that Grace and everyone is raving about? Why can’t I understand it?

I left it to rest. After all, I can’t come and die.

In 2023, the allure called out to me again and this time, I decided to read the book and gods, I almost whacked myself in the head for not reading, but I realized something. The book isn’t the problem, maybe it’s the season. I might sound fantastical, but I think it makes sense. Before I read that book, I was trying to know myself more, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing here and why I feel so out of place and out of touch.

Vagabonds showed me that when you live in a world where people don’t understand you or know what to do with people like you, you don’t fold, you do not dare to become small. Instead, you spread. In Nigerian pidgin terms, “no gree for anybody.”

And heavens, doesn’t it make perfect sense?

The language/writing style of the book was something that locked me in a state of awe and I got it. Words! Words might seem so small, but when you know how to use them, they can deliver a powerful effect and that’s what Eloghosa’s words did for me.

There was such a spirituality to them that I couldn’t ignore. The feeling made the hairs on my skin rise, and I felt such a glow inside of me and that’s when I knew that my life would change, but it wouldn’t be small. It can never be small.

What makes it more endearing to me? The fact that it’s Nigerian I suppose. I love Nigerian literature a lot because of its stories, and the familiarity and warmth that flows through you.

Vagabonds reveal stories about the forbidden— the things that are always in secret, but never really written about.There’s this quote here:

A thing being forbidden did not make it extinct; that, in fact, bans only created black markets.

Vagabonds!

It is such a wonderful representation of everything that has been called dirty, immoral and unclean.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have faith. It’s that you have too much faith in the story you’ve been told. What if everything they told you about yourself is not true? What if you’re not a sin? What if you’re not dirty? What if you’re worthy?”

What really goes on in the dark? What are the things that we believe do not exist, but when we are deep asleep at night, they come alive? Vagabonds answers that question.

Whatever cannot come out during the day finds a way to show its head at night.People say fear the night, because that’s when bad things come out. It’s not necessarily true. Unmasked things come out at night. True things. But truth is a horror when you’re not done hiding. Whatever cannot come out during the day finds a way to show its head at night. People know this. That’s why the ones with extra eyes always pray at night. It’s a way of bolting the doors between this realm and the other, of sealing the entrance.

When you lie awake at night believing that you are out of place, hating yourself because you cannot find it in you to conform, know that:

You will be strange,” they were saying, “but you won’t be strange alone.

Overall, this is the kind of book you do not rush into. When you pick up this masterpiece to read, remember to sink into the words and sit with yourself. It might not change your life, but it will never leave you.

This review doesn’t begin to cover the book and I hope that as time goes on, I’ll be able to write more content on the exquisiteness of it.

In 2024, Vagabonds is the first book I want to read. I want to start this year with dangerous audacity.

Get money. And in all thy getting, get disrespectful audacity.

The following are quotes from the book that stood out to me most:

Anybody who has tried it before will tell you this: silence is a dangerous thing to give yourself to, especially if you were born to speak.

Scared girls believe the girls who find them in their dreams, believe the friend they wish they had in real life. Girls like this one needed girls like them, girls who would fly the whole breadth of the city with solutions for happiness, with formulas for joy despite, with a hunger for justice and freedom, justice and freedom, justice and freedom.

See, me I have my own skeletons too. I no holy pass. And last last, holiness is not my focus, it is not my dream. When he pushed me, I’m not ashamed to say I fell. I fell majestically from his hands—and it was then that I finally understood what it meant to be outsided, to be where there is nothing but black noise, where you spend every waking second clawing the circumference of the city, trying to get back in.

You can see a lot of things better from the outside, you know? For example, I can see now that, together, vagabonds are the city’s power. We’re its charge and circuit. It cannot exist without us. It stands on us.

Go with your body; rest, lie your head here, rest; make a home here, rest.

If they ever ask why I go home with you,” Divine told her the first time, “I’ll tell them it’s because you’re you and you’re here, alive; because you’re my mine, because you tether me to me. That’s all you’ll ever need to do. Breathe and I’ll choose you again. There, see, I choose you again.”

So, a boy stands, then kneels in a pool of moonlight at midnight in his parents’ garden, asking God to kill him for being him. Then he looks up and God says a decisive no with not just one, but all the beautiful mouths They have. That’s it, that’s the story. And the lesson, love, is this: If your own god keeps failing you, God can show you another.

So give it everything, give it everything. Let’s teach this hypocrite of a night something or two. Make it run to its friends crying. Let’s make sure that by the time the morning comes, it rises gently and with a humble heart, like it knows what we tried to do to the world tonight, what we changed in the air forever.Let it rise like it will never again forget that we were here.

In fact, even if I do sound arrogant, so what? Who will beat me?

You can be anything you want when you’re free.

What they have told me about me is not true. I put my doubt in that and my faith in what I am. What I am is worthy. Worthy.

If anybody deserves to live, it read in the coming light, it is us. It is us, after all this dying we have done.

Year In Review

I am pleased to say this is the last blog post of the year. I started this blog in September and if we’re adding this, I’ve made 10 blog posts so far!

I remember when I was serious about starting the blog in the first quarter of the year and I had my friend— of loving memory— help out with it. I didn’t know how to navigate it and out of frustration, I deleted it. Boy, was he mad. Sometimes, I wonder what he would say if he saw the progress I’ve made so far.

I know I suck at consistency. I know how I can feel so clouded by sadness and think I’m not doing enough, but there’s this conviction strong in my heart — This Blog thing? It won’t be a small thing. It will be so much more and it will open doors I never thought were there.

And I won’t be able to do it without your help of course. Thank you to everyone who reads, like, even goes the extra mile to share my content because they think it’s cool or because they want to help me.

In 2024, we will be so much more.

Lastly, the party doesn’t end here. I’m taking a much needed break for a while, but I’ll be available on Instagram. The Bookstagram dream must be reality, so follow me for more!

With love and new year wishes,

Your Chaotic Book Blogger,

Mercy.