Koopman brilliantly wades through the flotsam and jetsam of generations, among shipwrecks and sunken treasures in an attempt at familial and collective healing. She faces up against her insecurities as a brown relatively privileged 'elder millennial'. An artist, a daughter, a queer woman in love, she is in pursuit of healing and always and forever trying to lose that last 5kgs to the great disappointment of her feminist self.
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Kelly-Eve Koopman. Because I Couldn't Kill You
A brief history of sameness
Do dinosaurs have feathers?
Scavenger hunt
Home invasion
A good suburban girl who will take her meds
Rainbow Nation depression
Upon closer inspection
The radical act of lying down
My mother wears a secret shade of red
Sunday lunch
I wonder if she considered herself an artist
The American Dream meets the New South Africa
Tupperware and Hertzoggies
My body and I
A grammable hike
Chocolate-covered divorce
A short history of kisses
Bad Queer
Khois is nie gay nie
Soregus: God of the Sky
29 times around the sun
This is an end for now
An actual end. Which is not nearly as gracious
Acknowledgements
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– Barbara Boswell, author of Grace
“This book serves as both the prescription and the medicine to the historical ills endured by women of colour. It is a love letter to our mothers, our grandmothers, their grandmothers (and ourselves) and, simultaneously, a cease and desist letter to the transgenerational trauma which for too long has taken root in our bodies. Koopman brilliantly rewrites herself, and all of us whose identities have been smudged, misshapen and erased, back into existence. Hard and heart-breaking, South Africa needs this book.”
.....
One day, perhaps the fourth or fifth time we decided to meet up, we were sharing a piece of cake. We were speaking about nothing in particular when he said, ‘You know, if it wasn’t for that day and your sister, things would still be OK.’ On the day my mother finally kicked him out of the house, he made it clear that he blamed my sister, then about 12, for finally putting the end to their mangled relationship. Never mind the years and years of his mental deterioration, neglect and abuse. I had no idea that, all these years later, he actually still believed this story. I thought that blaming my little sister was just a deflection he had conjured up in a moment of weakness and denial when he realised he was finally being given the boot. We had an argument, although I don’t think he took it very seriously because he still asked me for money for cigarettes when I asked the waiter to bring the bill. I had to pay.
We didn’t speak for years again after that. I thought it would be the last time we saw each other. It should have been the last time we saw each other.
