Everyone understands that life is hard, but self-love and dedication will always be the key. Becoming.is a beautiful debut collection of poetry centering around themes of feminism, sexuality, race, and mental health. Renaada Williams’s 100+ poems are short, personal, emotional tributes to the things that make us different and a celebration of all the things that make us the same. A journey through life, love, and loss,becoming.reminds the reader that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
My Review:
Rating: 4/5 stars.
Firstly, I would like to thank NetGalley and Andrews McMeel for giving me the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.
The fact that this book had been self published a few years ago by Renaada is very inspiring and to then get a publishing deal with a publishing company that has published women like Amanda Lovelace and Rupi Kaur is such a great achievement. Having rebranded the book with a fabulous new cover and a beautiful layout inside with brand new poetry as well I really hope that this book does well. I really enjoyed reading it. The amount of topics covered in this poetry anthology is mind blowing. Heartbreak, loss, grief, self worth, depression, suicide, culture, oppression, and so much more. I knew that I would love this book from the very being just from reading the dedication. It is dedicated to Renaada's Granddad and the poem that she wrote was so beautiful. Having recently lost my Grandma I could really relate to each word.
There were a few things that I didn't like. The fact that this book has no capital letters hurt my head. The most hurtful one was lowercase 'i'. It is supposed to be capitalised. Also none of the poems had titles which makes it harder to refer back to favourite pieces and I've always be taught to title my work. Another thing was that every single poem was centralised on the page. This was only done for aesthetic purposes which I do on Instagram but I would never do it in actual published work. My tutor on my creative writing course just told me off for centre aligning a poem. Only ever do it for a reason! Don't over use it. Also there was overuse of one word lines in a lot of the poems which should only be done for impact. But I was able to overlook all of this because I loved the content so much. If I could release a book any where near this standard I would be so happy. It only took me two days to read!
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