Book Thoughts: Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
After I read a book, I generally email my thoughts or notes to a friend. I'm now also copying these first emails to this blog since it's easier to revisit.
Original sent date: Jan 25, 2025
umm finally writing this email I guess. What do I say that I didn't kind of already say in another email.
This book made me think about the costs of revolution more. It's also an abolitionist text because they name dropped Mariame Kaba.
Initial thoughts when reading it were like "auughhh noooo YA lit aaaauughh". Thoughts when I finished it was, "Nvm i take it all back, this is literature teens definitely need."
The book hits the ground running and just keeps going. Every little interaction is specifically to set up something else later, which was really interesting. In fact I feel like it could've taken more time for some of its characters.
This book has magic in it, which seems to be a trend with these types of books I've been reading lately (usually where spiritual practices are treated as real, which of course I don't get to comment on as someone who is a non-believer in basically everything). At first I was like "auuughhh nOOOO not this again" but later I was like, okay. I guess if you have limited space and you want to make things go snap snap boom this would make sense to do. Not something I would have written but given the events it produced for discussion I'm okay with it, actually.
Some other thoughts:
Liked that you can kind of tell who was related to the foster system by what type of name they had. At least that's how I took it since they mentioned it for Bitter.
Bitter's accent was also really interesting. I don't know if they have an audio book for this because I couldn't find one but I would've liked to hear it pronounced in real time.
Thought the world building was garbo at first but they gave proper magic explanations for this via the principal. So yeah. She was also a really interesting character and I like that she also had her faults and had to own up to how she needed to regain their trust.
Don't think the idea that artists can put back their art or that the art has to "listen" to the artist makes any sort of real life sense. It works to wrap up the story and keep it short but IRL art does and will get away from you if it is adopted for other purposes, such as how creators of memes will be like "no stop" when their stuff is appropriated by the alt right and whatnot. unfortunately, it basically belongs to the alt right at that point. There comes a threshold whereby the art is not actually yours anymore, and that is crossed when the main understanding of your art by the general population is about how it was used by groups of other people rather than engaging with your core text. It sucks! But that's how it goes.
Liked the recognition of how killing is really hard on the people who have to do it.
Glad that the book killed the billionaire. So instead of telling us "don't do it because that would make you a bad person", it went for it despite many characters not being for it and then said, "what then?" and "where does it stop?", while also acknowledging the very fast real change that it brought about.
Really liked how some characters changed perspectives after actually having to see such things in real life. Aloe's development really surprised me, for instance, as did his vehement belief that civilians shouldn't be sacrificed in the name of the greater good.
In general the discussions about "we can't kill people or innocent people will die" vs "people are literally already dying" was good. It was something that was brought up in another email and I didn't manage to say then that this book literally also said that and presented both sides.
The who's part of and who's not part of Assata and the tensions between people on the frontlines and people who aren't was real and interesting. That type of tension is probably always going to exist, because even if we "need" everyone in different roles to make change, some people are at real proximity to death and they're definitely going to feel upset about that even when they consciously know that everyone is needed.
Thus, Eddie and Bitter's breakup was really interesting.
Ube as a character was big wow. Really big fan of his complexity and him telling Vengeance that he was already whole as a wheelchair user. I've never seen that before in fiction.
Ultimately, this book takes an abolitionist view as I think I said before because it says that we don't condemn people who choose violence (that kills people, not just self-defense or property damage) and it may bring about real change, but continuing to choose violence is ultimately not conducive to healing. Especially acting out of vengeance is not the way to go; violence as a tactic must be chosen carefully and deliberately.
There are times also where violence can lead to unforeseen pushback. The book leaves off of saying that there will be, but they did mention before that even if you kill a billionaire you don't know what other heads may sprout from this hydra. That's a risk you have to be aware of when you take it.
I get the point about Aloe / Bitter and waiting etc at the end but I didn't really buy into their relationship That Much, in that I kinda felt like Aloe did way more for Bitter than she for him. Also he could've left for more than a week tbh that boy not taking enough time for himself.
This book, in being extremely simply written, also made me nearly cry multiple times. It came out swinging shoujo manga-like and by god it just went for it. "Here's all this stuff you wish someone would say to you," basically ??!?! It was wild, actually. I would never write this because that's too direct and not "real" enough but I think, actually, a lot of people do need the direct stuff. Because sometimes they don't — can't imagine the direct emotional knowledge that is caring. What the hell. Aloe himself felt like a walking shoujo manga love interest of the purest kind. I hope some girl out there reads this and realizes that they want this in a man.
Ultimately, Bitter lacked an imagination for a different world so she ended up drawing something based on violence that got away from her for a while. I thought that was interesting. The book honestly could've gone more into what the alternatives Ube and the like were actually working on though, because I feel like out in the streets protests don't necessarily accomplish anything either when we're thinking about how like 1/3 of Hong Kong's population came out to the streets and they still got taken over by China. There definitely has to be something more sometimes... but what do I know. The only thing I can say at that point is that you need the threat of violence. Oops.
Might be forgetting some other things but here's some thoughts.